Inserting the hitch pins and fitting the rose

The ends of the strings are anchored to small iron pins known as hitch pins which are inserted into holes drilled along the edge of the soundboard. On some instruments the molding that runs along the edge of the soundboard is known as the hitch pin rail and the pins go through it but on the Neapolitan harpsichord the molding is purely decorative and the pins go directly into the soundboard and down into the liners.

Before drilling the holes for the hitch pins I experimented with some scraps of wood and discovered that the pins seemed to be very loose in the 1/16" holes that were recommended in the instructions. At first I thought that I might be drilling the holes over sized but, when I checked the diameter of the pins I found that they were about 0.060" to 0.061" in diameter. Since 1/16" is 0.0625" it didn't seem too surprising that they were loose. I asked Zuckermann about this and was assured that the 1/16" holes were OK and that provided that I drilled the holes to the correct depth and then hammered them into the hole so that the tip of the pin embedded itself into the liners everything would be fine. Well I tried this several times but never managed to get what appeared to me to be a satisfactory result - in most cases it was possible for me to pull the pin out with my fingers even after hammering it in to the depth suggested.

While I was reluctant to simply disregard what I had been told, it obviously wasn't working so I experimented with some slightly smaller drill sizes and eventually came to the conclusion that a 1.5mm drill (approximately 0.059") was what was going to work best for me. With that size of hole it was possible to push the hitchpin about 1/4" into the hole and then tap it in the rest of the way with a hammer - this did not require a lot of force but the result was a pin that was very firmly seated in the hole.


I did invest in a couple of special tools from The Instrument Workshop - a hitch pin setter and a bending tool which is used to bend the hitch pins back at an angle away from the direction of the string. While certainly not essential, these did make it a great deal easier to get all 106 pins in place without any mishaps.


The final result looks like this:


Once all of the hitch pins were done it was time to glue the rose in place: