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This is the finished soundbox shell. I hadn't taken
any photos up to this point, so you'll just have to imagine the
steps. First, a mould is used to laminate the curved back. The
top and bottom pieces of the soundbox are shaped to fit on the ends of the
mould, and the sound hole reinforcement is also shaped to the mould.
The lamination of the curved back is done. The mould is removed, the
top and bottom and reinforcement are glued and nailed in place, and the
lamination is trimmed back to size. The soundholes are marked and
cut, and reinforcement strips are shaped and fitted into the sides of the
shell. The end result of all this is what you see on the left. |
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Next the soundboard is cut up from a thin plank and reglued
to put the grain across the soundboard. The soundboard is planed to
taper it to be thinner at the top and thicker at the bottom. During
planing, it must be well clamped to avoid putting stress on the very thin
glued joints. Planing along the soundboard also reduces the stress,
so the plane must be nice and sharp to cut cleanly across the grain. |
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The soundboard must be finish sanded at this point, because
once the soundboard ribs are installed, the soundboard cannot be sanded
easily. Again, the soundboard must be well clamped. Sanding
with an orbital sander is nice and easy, but the final sand must be done
by hand. |
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Soundboard ribs are shaped and glued, and string holes are
drilled. |
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The soundboard is attached to the shell, a decorative
veneer of sapele is added to the back of the soundbox and strip mouldings are added
to the sides of the soundboard. |
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The soundbox is now finished.
This gets put away somewhere safe so it doesn't get damaged while the neck
and pedestal are being made. |
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The neck and pedestal are cut from a 1.5" brazillian
mahogany plank with a
bandsaw. I visit a local workshop to do this with a serious
bandsaw. The neck blocks are glued together onto the neck, ready for
shaping. I don't know what this bit is called, but I call it the
pommel. |
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The neck and pedestal are joined. Some people use a
mortice and tenon joint. The plans I've got use a lap joint.
I'm not happy with either - blind mortices are very hard to cut exactly
with no air pockets (important for good tone), and lap joints are not
inherently resistant to the twisting forces on the neck. I've come
up with a modified lap joint which is stronger and more stable than
either, and is fairly easy to cut precisely. |
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Here's a closeup of the joint taken later on, after
sanding. The little dogleg in the bottom of the lap joint stops the
joint from twisting apart with the tension of the strings pulling downward
on the right side of the neck. |
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The holes in the neck are drilled for the tuning pegs and
stop pins. |
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The pommel is shaped and smoothed. This photo was
taken later, so the routing has already been done. |
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My wife gave me a router last Christmas, so I have to make
sure I use it. :) |
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The base of the pedestal is shaped to fit over the sounding
board rib. When in place, it will be flush with the bottom of the
harp. I've just moved it up to show the joint better. |
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The pommel is joined to the soundbox. This is a
dowel joint. The spacer between the soundbox and the pommel
makes it easy to match the holes on both pieces. The spacer and the
dowels are glued to the soundbox. |
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The joint at the base of the pedestal is secured with a
bolt. You can also see that I have put a dowel through the left hand
side of the base, because I found that bolt alone, as instructed in the
plans, does not hold the base securely enough, and the strings actually
pull it out of place. The dowel stops this from happening. |
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The lowest few strings on this harp design can buzz against
the pedestal, so to stop this, I carve away part of sound post where it
comes close to the string. To work out where to cut away, the lowest
string (or a piece of string) must be installed, and a line marked 1 cm
outside the string. The section of the post is then carved away to
give the low strings more room to vibrate. I've shown a full view
and a close-up of the cutaway section. |
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The next stage involves lots of sanding. I haven't got
a picture, so just imagine me sanding for hours and hours and hours.
Imagine the cows coming home, and me still sanding. Actually it's
not that bad. A few hours each night, and by the end of the week,
it's all done. An orbital sander does most of the work again, but
the final sand is done by hand, and the routed corners must also be done
by hand. |
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After the sanding comes the finish. I use around 6
coats of nitrocellulose lacquer. 3 as a sanding sealer which is
sanded back, and then 3 more coats. |
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After the lacquer, some Celtic knotwork is
added. The design is traced onto the soundboard, and then painted
over with a paint-pen. I got carried away and did most of it before
I remembered to take a photo in-progress, so it's almost all done. |
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And that's the end of the woodwork on the harp itself.
Time to stand back and admire it briefly. A bit of late afternoon
sunlight doesn't do any harm either. |
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Next, all the hardware is added, and the harp is strung and
brought up to tension. |
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The finished, strung harp. The soundboard moves over time, so the harp
must be played every day and retuned regularly for the first month.
This gives me time to build the stand, and sew the cover. The more
observant among you will see that this is a different harp. This
photo is the first harp I ever made, whereas the rest of the photo set is
of my third harp. |
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To be continued... |
