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.