Lou Skinner Concepts — Shape
This description of shapes is divided into two parts. The first part describes four basic tube shapes, and the second part describes shapes of the blade area.
Tube Shapes
The page about fulcrums describes how the inside height of the tube area, from top to bottom, changes resilience. The side-to-side shape of the tube area also affects resilience. This page describes four basic tube shapes.
A. Exaggerated Flare
A tube with an exaggerated flare shape expands from the collar straight back to the butt end of the reed. This exaggerated flare produces a reed with very weak resilience, and therefore a weak tip aperture. As explained at the page about resilience, this can be desirable for some players, and can be combined with other characteristics of fulcrum and gouge to produce very good reeds.
B. Flare
A tube with a flare is parallel from the collar back to wire II, and then flares out to the butt end. This type of flare produces more resilience than the exaggerated flare, but is still relatively weak.
C. Straight Shank
A tube that is completely parallel from the collar back to the butt end has what Lou Skinner called a “straight shank.” This tube shape offers medium resilience.
D. Knochenhauer
A tube with a Knochenhauer shape is narrowed at the area of wire II. This “convex” tube shape requires the cane to be pulled around the mandrel during forming, giving the reed very strong resilience.
Blade Area Shapes
The shape of a reed in the blade area determines the amount of resistance to air that the reed offers. An important factor is the ratio of the tip width to the collar width. Here are three examples.
A. Average tip:collar ratio
This reed shows a fairly common tip:collar ratio of 15:9. The tip is 15mm wide, while the collar is 9mm wide.
B. Higher tip:collar ratio
This reed shows an increased ratio of 16:9, and will have less resistance to air. This might be a good choice, among other things, for harder cane.
C. Lower tip:collar ratio
This reed shows a reduced ratio of 14:9, and will have increased resistance to air. This might be a good choice for softer cane, or for a reed that you intend to scrape fairly thin for other reasons. (If you’re scraped a reed too thin, one remedy is to narrow the tip, to increase air resistance.)