Professional oboes are typically made of Grenadilla wood, which is a very dense wood that comes from only one place on planet Earth, namely Madegascar. The wood is well suited to the precise machining of the oboe body, however, because it is wood it can be susceptible to cracking.
This is a problem as the crack leak air and will cause the instrument not work function properly. So, when they crack those cracks must be sealed in order to function properly. The preferred method of sealing these cracks in called “pinning”. The photos below show part of the process of pinning these cracks.
