As promised a little bit of normal life and a whole lot of my other big hobby have got in the way of progress here and have now pushed me past my originally hoped for completion date. Hey-ho. Keep going.
After much carefull measuring and placement I positioned and clamped the Top on to the Body and drilled a hole at each end to peg them together similarly to the way the Back was attached.
While the two were clamped together I laid a pencil on the side of the Body so the point was a few millimeters out on the Top and traced it all the way round. I also measured out 400mm from the Saddle on to the Top to marck where the Bridge will sit. This also allowed me to trace in the locations of the 'f' holes and the Bass bar. In the mean time I also marked the sugested loctaion of the sound post on the back. Best case scenario this is where I will put the base of the Sound Post and all will be fine, worst case it will give me a frame of referance for adjustments.
I drilled a hole though the end of each 'f' hole and then took out my best (read 'only') coping saw, replaced the blade, and cut out the curves between them. Makes it sound almost easy! Alright by comparison that bit was.
I wizzed around the outline with my bandsaw and made a trial of the final fit. There was some adjustment needed to the tops of the Sides to make sure the Top sat flat without the need of clamps.
I couldn't resist a trial fit of the parts to see how the layout looks.
Don't ask me why this picture is upside down! It's the right way round on my computer and phone, it only uploads that way here.
While you're standing on your head to look at it you will see this picture shows the homemade clamps I used to hold everything together while gluing the Top and Reinforcement Plate on.
Sadly I seem to have lost the photos of the carved Reinforcement Plate before gluing. It took some time with the bandsaw, then a razor saw, and finally files and sandpaper to create the shape.
Also I don't have a photo of the Bass Bar in place. The Bass Bar was supplied pre-shaped in the kit but I sanded the free edge to a smoother curve as that is how the drawings show it. It takes some force to clamp it to the Top during gluing as it has a slight reverse curve to it but still needs to lay flat against the underside of the Top. The Bass Bar provides support to one side of the Top where the Bridge sits, the other side has the Sound Post near by.
I started work on the Bridge by laying it on my belt sander and leaning on one end until the top was about 3mm thick and the bottom was about 6mm. Then I cut the curve across the top and the curves down the sides. The holes were drilled through and the coping saw made the pretty little curves. The photo shows how I sanded the bottom of the Bridge to match the top of the instrument. Simply tape the sandpaper to your Nyckelharpa and get the rhythm going!
As it's getting late here I will finish off with this photo of the current state of work. I have made up the Keyguides and made the blanks of the first row of keys. Actually there are a few more keys started but they don't fit yet. Next time I will get some photos of the Keygides and show how they came together. Then I will have to get back to the project and make some more progress before I can write the post after that!
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