Samantha's Web Page

Here is my Rigoutat oboe. I bought it from Cygnet Studios (they sell used oboes as a fund raising program). They had listed it as being from the early 1960's as a guess. I play tested this against a Fox 333 that was about 10 years old. The Fox sounded like a PVC digerydo and had mechanical issues. This Rigoutat was a full conservatory oboe and was in all likely hood a used professional model. It did have one crack, but had been pinned. It had some tuning issues which now (over the last year) seem to have stabilized.

Shortly after settling on the Rigoutat, I wrote the company through their web site and got a reply from Phillipe Rigoutat! Apparently the oboe was far older than originally thought. According to the records Mr. Rigoutat had available, he said that his grandfather, Charles Rigoutat, would have made it (the case said Charles Rigoutat) and it would have been made between 1945 & 1948! This oboe is nearly 60 years old and it's still in good playing condition! Granted it does sometimes have issues (what oboe doesn't), but it's alot better than an intermediate quality oboe I could have bought new for the same money - the keywork is studier and has more options for aiding in intonation.

This is a reed I made. Here you can see the reed both as a silhouette and as you would normally look at it. The bottom half is a staple and the top is made of cane. The thread windings in the middle are to hold the cane onto the tube from the staple. Many times the reed will need something to either keep the blades from slipping too far or get rid of an intermitent leak, I use either fishskin or Teflon tape - sometimes I use the Teflon tape for corks that no longer fit into my reed well without wiggling around. Teflon is my prefered method as I can soak the entire cane portion of the reed and not worry about the sealing material falling off.

Here's the mandrel I use for tying my reeds. The staple goes on this to hold the staple while tightly binding the cane on. The staple needs to snuggly fit or else it will wiggle. I have used may brands of staples, a majority I've tried fit very well, a small minority are too big and the mandrel extends past the end - I don't use those, the opening is too big in those cases & I probably wouldn't be able to get the reed to close on the sides in those cases.

Here is my double hollow ground knife - it's what I use for most of my reed making. it's a good all purpose knife for me. I sometimes use a bevel knife to do some of the heavier work, but this one feels best in my hands.

Here is tube cane. This is what the cane starts out as, this cane is spilt and then gouged to produce cane that is quite thin (about .60mm in the middle). The splitter is just a handle with a 3 way cutting edge that you center in a piece of cane and then pop down, usually giving 3 pieces of cane that can then be gouged.

After splitting the cane, next comes pregouging. Take each piece of split cane and use the pusher to pass the cane down the groove against the blade at one end. This will shave off the edges of the cane, often yielding skewer like shavings. Often times I will pregouge & trim dry, take 3-4 passes with the gouger on the dry cane, then soak it in warm water for an hour - I do this so it soaks evenly & it reduces the pulpy gunk that has to be wiped off the blade when gouging.

This is my gouger. Once the cane has been spilt and pregouged it gets trimmed on the guillotine (a lot like a cigar trimmer) and then clamped into the bed of the gouger to be planed down to the desired thickness. Sometimes the space between the blade and the front cane guide get clogged. I just pass a small sheet of paper through the opening and the cane fibers that are blocking the opening are then unclogged.

I bought a new gouger from a good shop, however it was a brand they were less familiar with - so it was about 1/3 the normal cost of a gouger - I had to do the setup myself - a 1/4 lb. of cane later I had gotten the hang of things. the screw on the back of the blade lowered and raised the blade - adjusting the cane shaving thickness (I got it to average between .04mm and .09mm thick). The black knob under the handle adjusted the depth of a plastic plug which affected the depth the blade was allowed to go. The trick here was to loosen another screw (with an allen key) that was perpendicular to the screw's threads which lock it into place when not being adjusted. This was kinda tricky since I could turn the dial 5° CW or CCW and that would be .1mm too far!

A dial micrometer will greatly assist in determining if the cane has been planed down to the desired thickness.

Here are both gouged only and shaped cane. The cane that looks like a tube segment is gouged only, the one that tapers to each end is shaped cane. The gouged only is right after finishing the cane on the gouging machine, after folding and shaping you get the shaped and folded cane, this is a reed in waiting now.

Next is the oboe staple or tube. This is half of a reed (the other half being the cane that is tied onto the exposed metal - commonly brass, however nickel or german silver are also used). I use staples that either have real cork or a foam that looks like cork on the bottom. There are some that have rubber gaskets to hold the reed securely. I personally prefer the synthetic corks - my reed well is very small and often times I must use an emory board to file down the real cork staples so I don't damage the reed when extracting it from my oboe.

This is a shaper tip and handle. Using this you can get gouged only cane and use the shaper as a template get the same shape every time. Getting the same shape every time is important - it will be the same shape which means you can almost always tie it and scrape it the same way and get to know what the right length of reed is for your oboe and the shape. Wider shapes are usually flatter - so your reed might be 68.5mm when finished and narrower shapes are usually sharper so your reed might be 71 when finished. This is a Jeanné handle with a Rigotti 1 tip (comparable to a RDG 1 based on all the tip measurement charts that are around).  I use either the Rigotti 1 or a Gilbert -1 when shaping cane.