Chapter 6: Where'd the time go?

Wish I knew! If you find it please give it back, I need it.

There has been progress since my last post. Not as much as I'd like, but I'm getting used to that. One piece of advise is don't try using your bandsaw in your garage when it's freezing outside. It makes this thumping bang noise and the band stops going round. Turns out I snapped my first blade so I went in search of replacements. Despite buying my bandsaw from Screwfix they don't supply replacement blades for it, strange people. I used Woodford Tooling who also have an eBay shop called woodfordwm. They had a choice of blade lengths, widths and teeth per inch (tpi). The more teeth the better the finish of the cut, you also can improve the cut finish by cutting slower. The wider blade is stronger, but the narrower blade can cut a tighter curve. The blade length depends on your bandsaw so check the instructions for that one.

I have been making preparations to bend the Top and might even get around to completing that job next weekend.
First off I have recut the three curve forms and made four more. I came up with this method of getting them all as alike as posible.

Having found that M8 bolts are a good fit in the groove of the bandsaw table I made the extension plate out of aluminium sheet and bolted it down. I then made the two side cuts so that I could fold down the sides of the sheet. This gives it some rigidity and the sides are against the edge of the table so it doesn't droop. I worked out that the curve I need is just over 31cm radius so I then drilled a hole that far out from the bandsaw blade. The arm was then drilled so that it's length from the pivot is about 28cm to keep it clear of the blade. I carefully drilled two nail holes in the end of the arm so I could also repeatedly drill a matching two holes in the pieces of wood to make them all the same.

The good news is that I have seven blocks of wood with identical curves in them, the bad news is that the curves are slightly off from each other. Fortunately I have gone through the collection and found that I just need to put a little packing under five of the blocks to make them match. Not wishing to spend the rest of my life fettling these blocks I figured that would do me.

Meanwhile elsewhere:
I have also been looking into making the wood bend.
Apparently you can get some great flexibility by using chemicals like ammonia according to a YouTube video I found. But given my prowess and luck so far that looks like a good way to get into a lot of trouble.
The more traditional methods are either steaming or soaking in hot water. Sören Åhker suggests the hot water method and, as it looks the safest plan, that is what I am planning on doing.
Now, last time I checked, wood floats so I need to make a bath for the wood that will keep it under the water. I bought an oversize roasting tin from Nisbets and used some metal bars and bolts to make the supports for the wood.

The outer bolts will stop the wood drifting to the sides. The inner bolts are the ones that will hold the wood under the water. The heads of the bolts are at the bottom end to give a bigger surface area so hopefully they won't mark the wood, but I am aiming to put them towards the four corners where the wood will be cut away anyway. The length of the wood is just short of the length of the tin so it won't go anywhere that way. Quite simply I plan to put the wood in, fill the tin with hot water and try to keep the temperature up for about an hour or so until the wood becomes flexible enough to bend over the forms I've just made.

Tune in next time to find out what happened!

Chapter 5: And so it begins.

The day has finally come! It really happened! I have actually made a start on the Nyckelharpa!

I know, you were begining to think this day was never going to get here and it was all another internet sucker, but I'm happy to say it's not.

See! Here's the Nyckelharpa's Neck now unattached from the End Block. I'm glad to say my curve cutting skills are improving a bit now. The observant ones will remember that the long curved cut under the Neck was already there when I uploaded the first photo of the wood and parts collection when I started this blog. That was how the wood was supplied to me and was a rather rough cut, so I had to put my curve cutting skills to practice by triming it back to the line a bit more. I also cut the inside curve at the base of the Neck having traced it from the drawings. So the general shape of the Neck is ready, although I do still need to choose a layout for the String Tuners and cut and drill that at the end of the Neck.

While I was examining the two pieces of wood that will make the sides of the Main Body I found one of them had two knots in it. The instructions say that all wood used should be free from knots, so I had to take care to lay the template out so that the knot would not be in the finished article. The small knot is close enough to the end of the wood that I could put the template beside it. The large knot in close enough to one side of the wood that the template fits around it.

 

And now we have our first glimpse of how these parts go together. If you are really observant you might notice that the Left Side (nearest the camera) is 45mm wide while the Right Side is only 40mm wide. The Nyckelharpa is not built symmetrically on purpose, because of the strings being played with the aid of Keys and Tangents and will be explained more when I get to the Keychest.

I have clamped the parts together to make sure that the templates all line up with each other across the joins (and so I can pick up and hold my (not so) soon to be Nyckelharpa).

In the process of cutting the sides I cut right through the middle of another small knot. Just for fun here is what the woodgrain looks like when I put the two pieces side by side, mirror style.

And finally, here we are. The Main Body Sides are cut, a bit rough in places, and ready for sanding. The End Block has had it's inside curve cut as well. The sides have been left uncut at the two ends to aid clamping when I get to glueing these together, this also means that the Sides and End Block can be cut in one go.

Well that's it for this time. Let's hope it won't be too long until next time!

Chapter 4: More Preparation...

but finally some woodworking has been done!

The events depicted here happened a week ago, I just haven't had time to get it typed up.
The good news is that I can promise that the next instalment will contain the actual begining of work on the actual wood that will hopefully become an actual Nyckelharpa!

The Top Panel of the Nyckelharpa has to be bent in to a curve before being cut and fitted to the Body. In order to do this you need two things: A form to bend it on, and an hour of hot water or steam to make it flexible.

I'm still thinking about the second part, but the first is almost done.

 Built out of a 600mm by 1200mm sheet of 18mm thick plywood from the local DIY store is this:

The deck is 250mm wide by 600mm long so it is just bigger than the sheet of wood that will be the Nyckelharpa's Top.
The rest of the plywood was cut in to six 150mm wide strips.
One strip was then cut in to three 150mm by 200mm rectangles. These and two of the complete strips then had slots cut in them so I could put them together to make the base of the bending form. This will give me a very strong structure.

The remaining three strips of plywood were cut in half to make six 300mm by 150mm pieces. I glued these together in three pairs. These pairs were drilled so I could bolt them all together for cutting the curve. As they are too thick to go through my bandsaw in one go I put two pairs through together, then swaped out one of the pairs so I had a guide to cut the last pair.

The idea is that I have three wide, curved forms to attach to the table I already made, and the other parts could be bolted together to form a sanding block for shaping the Nyckelharpa Main Body to fit the top.

Unfortunately, as you can see, my curve cutting skills aren't quite up to scratch yet, so now I need to correct the final line before putting it to use.

I also had the idea that if I made the curve forms removeable I could use the plywood table as flat surface when it comes to glueing the Nyckelharpa's Main Body parts together. I drilled through the tabletop and curves and fitted 8mm diameter wooden dowls from the local DIY store to make this work. The dowls are a tight enough fit to hold together, but loose enough that I can pull the forms off without much effort.

When I have worked out how to steam or boil the wood and have it flexible I plan to lay it on top of the forms and use ratchet straps to pull it down to the correct curve.

Chapter 3: What you plan and what takes place...

... ain't ever exactly been similar.

I did say this wasn't going to be done in a few weeks, but this is taking the wossname.

The drawings were supplied to me in two formats. There is an A2 sheet with drawings of the Main Body and Neck side profile on one side and the Key Chest on the other. The rest of the drawings are on A4 paper in the back half of the book. Some of the A4 drawings are just construction diagrams, some are full size, some half size, and one drawing is an odd scale but does show dimensions. So I set about scaning the drawings and resizing those that needed it so I could go out and get them printed for me.

First lesson.
This might come as a surprise to you too, or just make me look stupid but...
What's twice the size of A4 paper?
Did you say A3?
Well your kind of right, but definately wrong when it comes to this project. A3 is equal to two sheets of A4, but if you want an A4 drawing twice the size you need A2.
Come again?
A3 is twice the area of A4 but, to make a drawing twice the size, you need the width and height to be doubled and that makes the area four times greater, hence A2.

After two trips to the printers I now have copies of all the drawings at the right size to begin doing some woodwork. (Yes I know that Mr Åhker said 'Please don't make copies' on his drawings but I find it much easier to transfer them to the wood that way and the copies will be destroyed in the process). I have now started to cut out the drawings and use these templates to trace the lines on to the blocks of wood.

This leads into the next step of actually cutting the wood. Apparently a bandsaw comes in handy. So I spent some time searching the internet for something cheap but good quality (yes, I know you get the quality you pay for, but I'm not made of money). I settled on a Scheppach Basa 1. It's not too expensive, has very good reviews, and is just big enough to cope with the work involved.
Having ordered and awaited the arrival of my bandsaw, and then spent most of the morning putting it together and setting it up, I finally started cutting wood today.

Now, before you start geting all excited, I will point out that this was just a practice run. I haven't used a bandsaw since I left school and didn't get much practice then either, so I didn't want to rush in with the expensive tonewood straight away. Luckily where I work we get a lot of reasonable quality scrap wood so I aquired a piece large enough to be a stunt double to the real thing and had some trial runs. The picture shows the stunt double with the correct curves for one of the Main Body sides although the straight runs have been shortened so I could concentrate on the curves. I have found two things that need to be taken into account.
1. Some of the tighter curves need some extra cut-ins to get the blade round,
2. The saw will happily cut through pine like a knife through butter, but it does chew rather than cut if you try going too fast. If you go at 1mm per second you get a very nice cut edge that won't need much sanding, but you can go at 2 or 3cm per second and get rough saw marks on the cut.
With those noted, it now looks like we're good to go.

So, if nothing else unexpected turns up, next time I could be cutting the real thing! Won't that be a surprise. There's just the small matter of an A-Series engine needing a new camshaft looming in the mean time (I did say there were other projects on the go).

Chapter 2: When I'm about to do somthing stupid...

I like to catalog the full extent of my stupidity for future reference.

While I am no stranger to wood working this is my first musical instrument and thus will demand a little more patience and care than some of my previous projects. Also there are some required tools that I still haven't acquired yet. A pillar drill, band saw, tuning peg reamer, and sound post tool are already on the shopping list. I also need to research and source glue, varnish and a bow to finish things off. There may also be somethings I have missed so far.

Now, just incase you haven't realised it already, this is not going to be a quick 'one or two weeks' job. I do have a full time job with awkward hours, and another big project on the go. I would like it to be done within six months though but we shall see how it goes.

Let's go back to the picture of the supplied kit and see what we have.

The simple answer is 'Lots of pieces of wood and a few extra bits', but lets put names to things. Some names seem a little odd but I'm following centuries of tradition here and this is how Sören Åhker's book and plans identify them.

From the top of the picture we have:
The Left Side of the Body with the Bridge on top and the Strings resting against it.
To the left of the Strings is the Tailpiece.
To the right of the Strings is the Neck and End Block (these are two parts to be cut from one piece of wood) with the Nut or Saddle (the small piece of wood) leaning against the Reinforcement Plate on top.
Then there is the Right Side of the Body with the Sound Post in front and, to the left, the four Tuning Pegs for the Playing Strings and the Guitar Tuners for the Sympathetic Strings.
There are four Fine Tuners for the Playing Strings beside the Back and the thinner Top.
The bottom left quarter of the photo is filled with a whole host of wood strips that will make the 37 Keys. The top one of the wood strips is much thicker because it will be used to make the three Bent Keys.
The bottom right quarter of the photo has the preshaped Bass Bar at the top, followed by some more Keys and the two Key Chest Attachment Plates to the left, and the pieces of the Key Chest including the precut Key Guides to the right. And finally, at the bottom, are the thin strips that will become the Tangents.

How many parts is that?!
Keys - 81 parts (30 two-part keys and 7 three-part keys).
Body and Neck - 9 parts.
Key Chest - 12 parts.
Tuning Pegs - 4 Parts.
Sound Post.
Bridge.
Tailpiece.
I make that 109 wooden parts to shape, glue, and varnish before adding 26 screws, 6 tuning parts, and 16 strings!

Good game, good game. Thirty seconds, starting now!

Chapter 1: The Prologue

For a while I have wished I could play the Violin but the thought of trying to find the right note unaided on an open string has always put me off. While I have always listened to rock or metal music I also like classical and Irish / Celtic music and that is part of what drew me to the Violin.
Some years ago I saw Dead Can Dance in concert and saw an alternative instrument called the Hurdy-gurdy. It uses keys to touch the strings for each note so it removes the problem of learning to get your fingers in the exact spot, but instead of the bow it uses a wheel turned by a crank to vibrate the strings. The Hurdy-gurdy is a bit limited for my liking as it can only be played on one string at a time (excluding the drone string). Some do have a few strings that you can switch between, but it's not practical mid-song.
A few months ago I came across a band on YouTube called Triskilian and one of them was playing an instrument called a Nyckelharpa and I found what I was looking for. It has a body similar to a Violin but larger, keys like a Hurdy-gurdy, is played with a bow, and multiple strings like a Violin.

A search of the internet again found some useful webites
UK Nyckelharpa Society
Nyckelharpa UK run by Vicki Swan a music teacher.
American Nyckelharpa Association
Holzman Folk Traditions an American maker who can also provide a kit.

I have now bought plans and a kit from a Swedish Nyckelharpa maker, Sören Åhker.

So now I have to turn this into a working instrument.