Keyboard 2

The assembly of the keyboard is now complete, although it will undoubtedly need a little more adjustment before it is really finished.

Gluing on the tops of the sharp keys didn't turn out to be nearly as difficult as I had expected it to be.

Here everything is lined up in place ready to be glued - a piece of wood is clamped down onto the tails of the keys at the back of the keyframe to keep everything in place. A steel ruler is used to provide a straight edge to line up the back of the key tops.


The three leftmost key tops are now glued in place.

In order for the keyboard to work correctly the keys all have to be balanced so that they rest in the "up" position and require a consistent amount of force to press them down. This is done by drilling holes at appropriate places in the side of the key and inserting lead weights to achieve the desired effect. Each key is balanced individually by putting a small weight on the front end of the key and then moving a piece of lead up and down along the key to find the balance point. Once that is determined a hole is drilled in the side of the key at that point and the lead weight is inserted. Because the natural keys come in several different shapes and sizes the amount of weight needed and its exact position can vary quite a lot from key to key. The sharp keys on the other hand are much more consistent in size and, on this keyboard, were already almost perfectly balanced.

The only thing left to be done to the keyboard is a final light sanding of the key tops and an oil finish.

Now it's almost time to start thinking about fitting the soundboard but before I do that I want to make sure that everything else is going to fit perfectly.

Note that all stages of harpsichord construction are being closely monitored ...


Here the keyboard and the box guide registers are in place along with the nameboard and the decorative key end cheeks. Both the keyboard and registers fit perfectly.


The end cheeks will need to be carefully filed to match the case once they are glued in place but they too are a good fit and shouldn't present any problems.