A very exciting package arrived 10 days ago from Robin Howell in Toronto – just before we left for a family holiday in Cornwall. Here are two videos kindly made by my 10-year-old son Sebastian, documenting my holiday project: a better solution to that all-important item, the reed cap.
These reed caps are for new reeds, i.e. they go further down the blades and serve to teach the reed its unfamiliar new shape over the breaking-in period, preventing lateral slippage of the blades and, fundamentally, making them playable. Reeds of this type are unusable without caps and I have learned since my aulos debut in January that well-fitting caps make a huge difference to being able to pick up an instrument and be its master in front of an audience, reliably. Hence the effort invested here, tailoring each cap to its reed.
Having to make 24 caps all at once for 12 beautifully-made Pydna reeds gave me an opportunity to develop my system and production method. I would welcome feedback – I am a new student at this and in these videos present only one of many possible solutions. Next time I make a batch, I think I will try using two strips of large-diameter cane, carved flat on the inside, then hot-soaked and bent around a hardwood carved reed shape, tied and dried before the final step of customising to fit an individual reed.
My “Towan” solution (the farm cottage where we are staying in Cornwall) is more labour-intensive. Rather than bending a flexible material, here I carve a hard one. Garden prunings are much better than dowel rod bought from a DIY store because they split perfectly. In these videos, I use rose I cut back last October and tied in a bundle to straighten the canes, but long straight shoots of some shrub or tree with softer wood and solid section (rather than pith) might be better. Rose is very hard, but I am pleased with the results and hope you can pick up something useful from these videos.
Part 1
Part 2
Photos
