Making the Case for Pre-Gouged Cane

If you have a gouger, our premium pre-gouged cane may still be your best bet, even if you own a pre-gouger.

Discrete Diameters

Capitol Cane's premium pre-gouged cane is carefully sorted into discrete diameters instead of diameter ranges. For example, our pre-gouged oboe cane comes in 10.0, 10.25, 10.5, 10.75 or 11.0 mm diameters, instead of 10.0 - 10.5 or 10.5 -11.0 mm ranges. Purchasing cane that is the optimum diameter for you results in more consistent reedmaking and more consistent reeds, saving time and materials.

Tube Cane Waste

Tube cane comes from the Arundo donax plant. Since it is a plant, the tubes are not necessarily uniformly round. One tube often yields 3 different diameter sections. For example, tube cane labeled 10.0 - 10.5 mm will often result in sections from less than 10.0 to over 11.0 mm. On average, when we carefully process our cane we end up with about 54% usable cane that is straight and within the 10.0 to 110.0 mm range. In other words, we discard almost half of the cane from the start.

We then sort the cane into the discrete diameters. Let's say your optimum diameter for reedmaking is 10.5 mm. On average, this accounts for about 24% of the sorted cane, which is only about 13% of the original batch.

The bottom line is; if you were as picky as we are in selecting your cane, you would discard as much as 87% of the cane. Choosing our pre-gouged cane provides you cane that fits your reedmaking specifications with little to no waste. You get more control over the variables, resulting in more consistent reedmaking.

Gouger Wear and Tear

Our premium pre-gouged oboe and english horn cane is processed on Reeds 'n Stuff pre-gouging machines. Pre-gouged oboe cane has a thickness of appoximately .90 mm in the middle and english horn cane is approximately 1.00 mm in the middle. This results in significantly less material to remove compared to cane pre-gouged with a push-through pre-gouger or a planer (see diagram below). It will take you less strokes to gouge each piece of cane resulting in far less wear and tear on your gouger blade. Go to pre-gouging for more details on our process.