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

In less than an hour, both tubes were all glued up to the frame. Isn’t it nice when you are expecting the worst, and somehow it falls into place like it was meant to be? Those moments don’t happen nearly enough, but I like ‘em!

I was starting to get excited now, I had most of the major pieces done, and it was time to get some finish on it and start putting things together to make some noise!

I didn’t get photos of the actual finishing process- it was a nerve wracking time. I used dye that I mixed under flourescent shop lights. It looked great on the wood…...under flourescent lights, that is. The morning after I sprayed all the color I took the pieces out under the sunlight and thought I would die! Have you seen the color orange on the barrels in a construction sight? These would’ve made good ones.

To make a long story short, I messed around with different colors of dye and was able to tone the orange down to a color I really wasn’t looking for to start with, but after a while , I couldn’t imagine any other color being more perfect. I got it standing on it’s own 4 feet, and the world was good again…

Have you ever had a thought, and wondered if it has been done before?

Several years ago, I was adjusting my hurdy gurdy, which is an instrument invented in the middle ages that uses a rosined wheel to bow the strings. There are usually 4 to 6 strings that are constantly in contact with the wheel- 2 to play the tune, and the rest are drones, giving it a sound very similar to bagpipes. This particular hurdy gurdy was built from plans from “musicmakers” kits in MN, using 1/8” plywood, and some leftover paneling from someones remodeling project. The keyboard buttons and tuning keys are made from a junked oak pallet…but this is another story/project.

I had all of the strings shimed so as to not make contact all at once. (it’s a lot easier to find the screeching string without all of them blaring) as I lowered the strings one at a time into the wheel, I thought how great it would be to have a full scale, and lower only the string you wanted into the wheel.

At first, I envisioned a small instrument not much bigger than a hurdy gurdy. After figuring out the space needed for key hardware, I realized this was not going to be something you could pack around easily…might as well put some legs on it to hold it up.

I started with the wheel. This is the most central element of this type of instrument- If it does not function well, neither will the rest of the instrument. I started thinking of ways to place the strings around the wheel in a way that would allow them to make contact easily. The normal hurdy gurdy configuration soon went out the window; a flat soundboard would make for a really tall bridge with lots of pressure and unequal distance from the soundboard to the strings. I soon settled on a barrel shape.

Up until this point, I had never seen anything remotely like this instrument. As fate would have it, during a trip to play hurdy gurdy, a friend loaned me an encycopedia of musical instruments. Low and behold, I found the geigenwerk…an instrument invented in the 1500’s in Germany. It looked nothing like what I had planned- It was based on a harpsichord and used 4 or 5 small wheels instead of one large wheel, but the idea was the same. A quick web search when I got home turned up a harpsichord builder in Japan, Akio Obuchi, who had interest in this subject as well, and had built a reconstruction of the geigenwerk. After exchanging a few e-mails and getting some ideas from Akio on how to move the string into the wheel without a lot of bulky mechanical garbage, I started to make the sawdust fly.

The first things I made were the bow wheel, the flywheel for the treadle, and the legs. I did a lot of the proportioning at this stage by holding my hands in the air over an imaginary instrument and getting a “feel” for where things seemed natural, then marking a stick, a wall, or whatever was handy to record my scientific, pecisely arived at, measurement…

Next, I built a lightweight frame for the two tubes that would serve as soundboards and resonators. I made within this frame smaller cylinders with drum heads on them to couple with the soundboard via a soundpost, but I don’t think it actually added a lot of volume to the thing. I actually tried several variations of these resonators- aluminum membranes, slinkys, anything I thought might increase the resonance. I did get some neat thunder like effects!

I’ll stop for now, but in the next installment, will show the plywood shell getting wrapped around the frame and standing it up on it’s own 4 legs. Hopefully soon I will also be posting progress on a new instrument of similar design.

Till next time….