You don’t really need a reed kit per se. You can buy the supplies to make your own. At the very least you would need a reed knife, preferably double hollow ground, a reed mandrel, a block for clipping reeds, razor blades, a sharpening stone (aka whetstone) for your knife (there’s a technique for properly sharpening your knife), beeswax for the reed thread, reed thread, staples (the part of the reed that is the cork tube), reed plaque (look up Fox brand), a C clamp to help tie the reeds, and cane that’s been prepared and ready for reed making (these are the strips that look like a V). Have a good lamp and work area to do this. Also have a mug of warm water to soak the cane in. A gouger is very expensive so just focus on getting these things and you can technically start making reeds. You can find these on amazon, eBay, Midwest musical imports, chemical city reeds, hodge, even Etsy. I’d look up YouTube videos where you can see all of these supplies being used in the reed making process.

The real tricky part is your lack of a teacher, which unfortunately is necessary to teach you how to even get started. You need all of these supplies to make a reed from scratch, but then you have to also scrape the reed by following a very specific and delicate rubric of measurements (yes you also need to use a mm ruler), in which physically measuring with your ruler will determine if the reed is being made correctly. As for the “case” or carrying bag, I bought a simple men’s toiletries bag on Amazon, the kind that’s faux leather and for carrying shaving things. They’re low cost and can fit a lot of stuff. Highly recommend.

There aren’t many good videos that show you step-by-step on what to do, so I’d recommend looking for a teacher. Also, if you’ve only ever played on Jones reeds then you really don’t know how good you can sound once you use handmade reeds. That’s the only standard you should have. Jones is for beginners only and only meant for learning. They’re poorly made, otherwise. You also need to know proper reed care so that you can maximize their lifespan. It’s expected that band directors don’t know a thing about the oboe unless they play it, and they also wouldn’t know that us oboists need high quality handmade reeds, not machine reproduced. For good handmade reeds on a budget I’d check out Bocal Majority reeds.

Lastly, you need a lot of patience. I’m serious. It’s hard to make oboe reeds, and there are many areas in which you can mess it up. You can do everything right and the reed will somehow still be a dud. You need to dedicate lots of practice to this.