Lou Skinner’s Short-Gouge Model Reed

Lou’s Short-Gouge Model is made with cane that has been gouged with either a concentric or eccentric gouge, to a thickness of at least 1.25mm. Then a hand scraper is used to scrape the gouge thinner on the sides of the cane, but only from collar to collar. Lou thought that forming the tube with concentric- or eccentric-gouge cane caused the fibers of cane on either side of the center-line (the “mid-range” fibers) to be compressed. This compression meant that these areas of the blades would require thinning with the knife or file in order to vibrate as intended. The short-gouge technique thins the internal fibers in these areas, “alleviating” the compression, so that the blades require less work with the knife or file. The internal scraping can be described as scraping “channels” on the inside of the blades rather than the outside. Lou said that Sassenberg of Berlin, who made gouging machines, sometimes honed the gouging-machine blade in a fashion that was not a perfect curve, in order to create a similar alleviation in the mid-range fibers. Of course, Sassenberg’s blade would have scraped the alleviation along the entire length of the piece of cane, but Lou preferred to create the alleviation only in the blade areas.

Here are some photos of pieces of cane that Lou made as examples during one of my visits, to show various stages of the short-gouge process. To make a short-gouge reed, Lou first inserted the cane into a shaper and removed the edges of the cane, so that the width of the cane was the same as the widest point (the fold) of the shaper (Step 1).

Lou then used a stiff, straight-edged knife to scrape from end to end, resting the blade on the edges (Step 2). This scraping created “ribbons” at the edges of the cane.

Next, Lou marked pencil lines (shown in black) across the cane at the collars, and then 2 long pencil lines (shown in red) to divide the blade area of the gouge into thirds, shown as areas 1, 2 and 3 (Step 3). Then he used a shaping knife to cut away the ribbons in the tube areas (Step 4).

Next, Lou used a circular scraper to scrape the sides (areas 1 and 3 in the photo for Step 3) from collar to collar, to remove the “ribbons” (Step 5). Care was taken to avoid scraping the edges of the cane and the center-line area (area 2 in the photo for Step 3). The final photo shows the result after one side (the top third, area 1 in the photo for Step 3) has been scraped.

Finally, Lou used sandpaper to gently smooth the results and remove any bumps left at the beginning of each scrape at the collar lines. The cane was then ready for shaping to be made into a blank.