Bassoon Reed-making: The 4th Stage

Stage 4: Finishing the Reed

• Using diamond or sapphire nail file, form 'triangle tip.'
• Soak reed and re-tighten middle wire if necessary.
• Using knife, scrape each quadrant of reed, focusing primarily on the channels (the area between the spine and the blade edges) and fanning out at the tip. You are trying to reinforce the German tip opening. I will show you the correct knife position for trimming the back and mid-section of the reed and the different knife position used for trimming cane at the tip.
• As Popkin notes: Observe both the tip opening and the shading of the blades when held up to a lamp. The darkest blade side (the hardest) will cause the tip opening on its side to bow out. Remove more material on that side.
• Test reed for air-tightness and triple crow. According to Popkin: The tip will crow at pianissimo levels; the mid-section and tip will crow at slightly more pressure; and all three sections (tip, mid-section and bottom) will crow at slightly more pressure. The absence of a crow at any of these levels should indicate generally too much material in the related section. The tip crow should produce a pitch between E-flat and F an octave above middle C.
• Test reed on bassoon and continue adjustments over a period of several days. Do not try to finish the reed all at once--the cane becomes highly saturated in the early finishing stages due to the large amounts of cane being removed. This water saturation can result in your removing too much material if you try to finish the reed without letting the cane cure between steps.