Stringing

 

Pinning the nut

Painting the case and the lid

The case and the outside of the lid are painted with milk paint and finished with several coats of boiled linseed oil which gives the paint a very nice deep and rich color.

After considering several possibilities for the inside of the lid I decided that the wood looked sufficiently good that just coating it with some light amber shellac would work.

The outside color extends all of the way to the bottom edge of the molding on the lid and the flap and initially I thought that it might be difficult to get a clean line between the paint and the shellac so I decided to apply the shellac to the inside of the lid first, then carefully sand the bottom edge of the molding before painting the outside of the lid. Milk paint really only adheres to bare wood so I was hoping that it would be easy to clean off any of the paint that might bleed through onto the shellac. In the end it didn't really matter because I managed to get a very clean line just by using masking tape on the molding and being very careful.

After finishing the inside of the lid I fitted the hinges to the lid and the flap.

The lid flap folded back ...

... and the lid open.

Next I painted the outside of the case.

Here it is after getting its first top coat of boiled linseed oil.

Here you can see the contrast between the flap which has just been painted but not yet oiled and the rest of the case.

The lid and the flap getting their first coat of oil.