I kept it at the festival for about 3 hours, then gave up and took it to the house. After I catch up on a few things- going to try and tweak it some more- I’m going to move the keyboard, and add a second keyboard and hardware to pluck the strings in addition to bowing them. I hate that this is taking so long, but this has really been time consuming, and I can only work on it for so long as it pushes the limits with family and work. Just aren’t enough hours in the day. Hopefully before long I can post it as a FINISHED project with sound samples.

An overview as to what this is: A harpsichord shaped instrument that will use a treadle driven belt to bow the strings when a key is pushed. It will use a different bridges and stringing arrangment than harpsichord- this is more like a big hammer dulcimer in design.

I applied dye and laquer- still needs work, but it’s getting there. I liked the natural look, but there was a lot of green to cover in the poplar.

got the flywheel amost done…still have to attach the treadle plate and pitman arm, connnecting rod, or whatever you call the thing that goes from the pedal to the crankshaft.

strumming the strings…

plucking the strings

If the bow mechanism doesn't work well, I may convert it to a type of lautenwerk (sp?) which is a cross between a lute and a harpsichord.

I have 2 weeks to get done...don't know if it's going to happen or not.

I will elaborate more on this instrument as time allows, but I am racing the clock to get it done. I want to have it working at least somewhat to display at a festival our town puts on every May.

This was my first attempt at real dovetails (I did a practice corner last summer) and I’m sure there are lots of people who could do nicer ones with a chainsaw…but I think they’ll look ok when trimmed up, and the main thing is, I want the corners STRONG. I can’t believe how strong dovetails are, even without glue.

More to come…

http://lumberjocks.com/projects/3705

These are quicky sketches and kind of vague, but maybe will give someone who wants to try this a starting place
First of all…a little disclaimer: I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT DRUMS—-or I didn’t until this project. I was commisioned to build some replicas for a reenactment, and could not find much information on construction. I looked at a lot of photos, and figured out how to build them with what I had at the time. I went the route of making my own heads from hides- first calf (which was too thick) but wound up using deerskin.

The rawhide was a lot of stinky, hard work, and since these are probably not acurate construction techniques, I’d recomend REMO brand FIBERSKIN synthetic heads. They are easier, don’t go slack in humid weather, and probably sound better. They come with a metal hoop molded to the edge, but if you find just the right color of masking tape you can cover it and it wrinkles a bit and looks just like the rawhide is wrapping around the hoop on a real drum. Get the drumheads first and build the drum to fit them- I think original drums range anywhere from 14” to 16”. I’d go smaller and maybe make a mockup if young or short people are going to play them. They are a little hard to play if dragging the ground.

I have 3 pages of sketches so far…up to the point of putting the heads on. I will still have to do some on making the snare strainer, roping the drum & making leather tensioning ears, and making the sling…but I wanted to get these up so those inquiring could maybe get a start. Like I said, this is just the way I did it…there are lots of ways to build these things. The best way to make the shell I would guess is making it laminated, but at the time I did not have that equipment. If anyone has any questions or suggestions, I’ll try to help. If you click on the below pictures (looks like they are cropped on the blog page) I think you will be able to see all of it by scrolling around.

There have been multiple attempts at doing this over the past 500 years or so, and this one is quite a bit different than anything I have run across so far. It is interesting to see how how other builders solved the problems I had. Many times in history there has been parallel development of similar concepts, totally independent and unknown to each other. It is an indescribable link to the past to have an idea, then see that someone else was working on it hundreds of years ago, but you can see their thought process, and where they were going with an idea. You get caught up in the rush of working out a problem, and think for a moment, “I wonder if I could email so-and-so…” and then you realize that they died 427 years ago.

Anyways…I’ll quit jabberin’ and continue.

Once the cylinders were mounted between the rails, the friction wheel (bow) and flywheel were mounted.
The friction wheel frame was set in a high density foam rubber mount between the rails so the rumbling of the bearings wouldn’t come through the resonating cylinders as bad.

Now that the wheel was in place, it was only natural to see if this baby would make some noise! A couple of strings were slapped on and some scrap lumber served as bridges. Without a treadle, the flywheel had to be kicked with your foot, or sometimes my then 5 year old son would hunker under the instrument and spin it for me (thanks buddy!) It worked! Wahooo! time to make real bridges.

A pattern was drawn up inspired by a violin bridge, but with one string notch. Sixty of these little boogers had to be cut out. I don’t mind telling you, by #60, I was not being quite as particular as the first few.
As it turns out, after researching some books on acoustics later: the footed construction of a violin bridge is somewhat innefective without all the mechanics of a violins insides. A post is mounted inside the violin under one foot making it stationary. This creates a pivot point, forcing the other foot to move up and down, driving the soundboard like a speaker cone. As my instrument had no soundposts, and the feet all overlapped and cancelled each other out, I may as well have made a solid bridge. Oh well…they look “musicy”

So now it is all strung up with real bridges, and a set of pins on the end that will eventually get a keyboard. The pins allow the string to be slightly above the wheel without touching, but allow the string to slide down and touch when a key is pressed. Thanks to Akio Obuchi, a harpsichord builder from Japan, for giving me this idea.

These pins are just wire nails, but later get replaced with polished brass pins to allow easier sliding.

Up till now, things have went almost too good. But after it was brought up to tune, things started to go more the way I figured they would…

more next time