This past week my new planer arrived from Ross. I fiddled a bit with the blade-originally it wasn’t really taking any cane off. But the mechanism was fairly easy to adjust, so now I have it set to shave off the sides pretty well. I’m sure I’ll be playing with it for a few more weeks. This first set of reeds is only tied on, I haven’t started the serious scraping yet.
I’ve come to prefer planing to pre-gouging. Last year, I was having some trouble getting a thin enough gouge with just pre-gouging. The sides of the cane were too tall for the gouger to process well. Thanks to my teacher’s input, I tried running cane through the pre-gouger and the planer which solved the problem. This year, I don’t have access to a pre-gouger, but planing alone seems to work. And it’s less time consuming without that extra step. There’s a little more gouging involved, but since I’m not a commercial operation, I don’t think it’s too much for my gouger to handle.
Thoughts? Pre-gouging, planing, or both?
Simaril Reeds 