Raising Grain

Brian Lee · Post by **Brian Lee** » Mon May 14, 2007 7:51 am

If the inner surfaces of your reed are left fuzzed up from rough sanding or your don't have a keen edge on your scraper, it does affect the tone. You loose the crispness of the sound, and especially at the lips, loose a great deal of response and playability of the reed as a whole. If you think about it, instead of a clean surface for the valve mechanism to work against, ie: the reed lips closing cleanly against each other, you've got a pretty inefficient closure now with all those fibers sticking out every which way. Doesn't give a clean closure of the reed, and will not give you an optimal tone.

None of this is to say it won't work at all, or that it will sound as complete sh*t when played, but it will not be optimal. You can also play your set with leaks....but it's not suggested to do so.

Joseph E. Smith · Post by **Joseph E. Smith** » Mon May 14, 2007 9:05 am

Brian Lee wrote:If the inner surfaces of your reed are left fuzzed up from rough sanding or your don't have a keen edge on your scraper, it does affect the tone. You loose the crispness of the sound, and especially at the lips, loose a great deal of response and playability of the reed as a whole. If you think about it, instead of a clean surface for the valve mechanism to work against, ie: the reed lips closing cleanly against each other, you've got a pretty inefficient closure now with all those fibers sticking out every which way. Doesn't give a clean closure of the reed, and will not give you an optimal tone.

Precisely the reason I take the path I do.

Bensdad, just for your amusement, I will do as you pondered and get back to you... but I'll have to fine sand the lips... without suction or the pressure resulting there, blades won't close completely. Blades don't close, bad thing happens.... bad noise. Bad noise is ow....

Brian Lee · Post by **Brian Lee** » Mon May 14, 2007 9:34 am

And again, having never raised the grain on my reeds, the method I've used with finer and finer grades of paper seem to work well here. Do perhaps there is more to it than just raising the grain or not - climate and probably more even than that - the qualities of the individual cane slip you're working will determine the quality of your finished slips. I love all this ambiguous stuff!!

brendan ring · Post by **brendan ring** » Mon May 14, 2007 10:44 am

I leave my reeds quite rough inside, I've tried very fine grades of sandpaper but don't really like the sound. When I say rough there aren't any hollows or gouge marks but it's not a mirror finish.Raising the grain? Wetting the cane or elder is madness to me!

AlanB · Post by **AlanB** » Mon May 14, 2007 11:26 am

How many times do you wet and sand down these fibers? Surely as you swell them and sand them you just remove them to allow a new layer to appear, a bit like exfoliation?

The case for a burnished or polished surface would be a bit different. I did use a method once or twice (it came from Cillian O'Briain or Allan Moller I think) that entailed running a layer of superglue on the cane and then sanding and repeating, kind of like french polishing, to bring about a sealed surface. It didn't work for me, but my history withe superglue is not great all round!

And also, it would have less effect as you worked nearer the bark? So the pith of a thinner slip would be less affected by moisture than a thick one? (those are questions).

Brian Lee · Post by **Brian Lee** » Mon May 14, 2007 11:42 am

There are all sorts of sanding sealers made for woods of different varieties. similar concept to the super glue trick I imagine, but a bit softer and easier to work. I've wondered about using a variation of the varnish used by a fiddle maker friend of mine, if there was a means to make it soft enough to flex without tons of cracking (in the varnish). Don't know if it would do much of anything. Am also trying a UV treatment on a few slips as well to see if it does anything measurable to the long term stability of the cane. It's supposed to work for fiddles as well. All for the sake of fun experimentation!

billh · Post by **billh** » Mon May 14, 2007 11:53 am

I haven't been impressed by the sanding sealer approach - tried various formulations, some of which hardly penetrate at all. ( I think they change the behavior of the cane, and thus the tone.)

I am not convinced a mirror smooth interior surface is important. However, I do believe a clean, exact closure of the lips/tip is important, and it's hard to achieve that if there is any roughness to the interior at that point.

My experience has been that when "grain" is raised by natural weather conditions, the resulting roughness can be considerably more pronounced than the scratches from even 150 grit sandpaper.

The thinking in the world of wood finishing is that a scraped finish is superior to a sanded one with respect to grain raising - less likely to produce a "furry" effect when finish it applied or humidity cycles. This is because the scraped finish, if done just right, cuts the fibers more cleanly than sanding/burnishing which tend to compress the fibers on the surface of the wood... for awhile.

Some woodworking techniques also use moisture or an initial coat of sealers/shellac to "raise the grain" before the final surface preparation, If shellac has been used to raise the grain, fine powdered abrasives can be used to take down the "nibs" that result - I suppose the thinking is that the now-stiffened fibers are easier to mow down without compressing them back into the surface. That's why a very light surface scrape etc. after "raising the grain" might not just exfoliate and leave things in the same state as where you started.

Now, how well all this actually translates to the fibrous material we are working with, reed cane, is not at all clear. However the techniques above seem fairly well established in cabinetry, violin finishing, etc. and so it doesn't seem unreasonable to try them here as well.

All that said, I don't currently raise the grain. I do however prefer using a finely honed scraper to finish the inside of the slips, in the hope/belief that it leaves a superior surface that is less likely to change over time than one produced with abrasives.

Best regards,

Bill

rorybbellows · Post by **rorybbellows** » Mon May 14, 2007 2:00 pm

Try what oboe reed makers do and quickly move a naked flame back and forth holding the reed above the flame . This burns away any microscopic hair of cane that may be sticking out

RORY

chanterdan · Post by **chanterdan** » Mon May 14, 2007 2:48 pm

i do not wet ,and raise the grain,i wet the tails before tying,but i do rub and polish with a bit of wax on inside of the blades.my reeds have been sounding good as ever,might have something to do with ted anderson's cali cane!great stuff!!

waymer · Post by **waymer** » Mon May 14, 2007 3:10 pm

John Peterson will rub the reed on a guill of cane to infuse the inside of the reed with balsom. I have never tried this myself so I don't know what it does beside make the inside of the reed feel smoother

seisflutes · Post by **seisflutes** » Mon May 14, 2007 5:55 pm

djm wrote:Idle conjecture here, but if you are going to wet the interior suface to raise the grain, wouldn't it be better to scrape the inner surface rather than sand it? You'd end up with a much smoother inner surface as opposed to sanding which always leaves ragged fibres to some degree.

djm

I agree, although it depends on the cane. Some (Spanish) cane I have now just doesn't respond well to a scraper. It seems to have some grain that is much softer than the rest, these little pithy streaks or something. I'm not sure how to describe it, but the surface isn't at all what you'd call smooth after just using a scraper on it. Of course, sandpaper doesn't help much either.
But finer-grained cane scrapes just fine, and I normally just use a scraper and no or very little sanding. If I do sand, I do also raise the grain.

Marcelo Muttis · Post by **Marcelo Muttis** » Tue May 15, 2007 8:21 am

I do raise the grain, and I had good results sanding and applying a layer of super glue and sand again. Thinking about this in my way to work, I was considerating to apply (after raising grain) a layer of "dope" (a varnish fit to use in model aircraft to searl wood´s pores and harden its surface) maybe it could reduce the impact of weather changes and improve the tone.

Brian Lee · Post by **Brian Lee** » Tue May 15, 2007 8:55 am

dope = sanding sealer...more or less anyway. One thing to note is that with any sealant type treatment, there are three things one is trying to achieve. First: the sealant needs to be just as flexible as the cane itself, if it's not, it will crack and allow moisture to permeate the grain anyway. Second: It needs to be permanent. Sealers, waxes and varnishes generally are - oils not usually as much. Third: it shoudln't change the mass or playability of the cane or color the tone if possible. Hard to say what works best in this manner as the cane itself is so variable.

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Raising Grain

Do you raise the grain?