My Oboe

In the mid 1990s I started building an oboe.

I was learning a lot about acoustics at the time, and about how woodwind instruments work. I thought it would be a useful exercise both to improve my skills as an artisan and to learn empirically about what makes an oboe tick.

Many thanks to Ken Decker who helped me with the wood, and Alain de Gourdon who provided me a set of keys that I cut apart and adapted to my tonehole placements, I finally finished the instrument in 2001.

The oboe is made of Honduran Rosewood, with rings at the crown and bell made from water buffalo horn with contrasting bands of boxwood. The concept of the instrument is a light, thin walled oboe with tall tonehole inserts that provide the necessary length of the toneholes for warmth and stability. It is padded using a synthetic pad I developed at the time, which has a vinyl face over a laminated cork backing. The pads are extremely quiet and stable.