The sharps after getting their first coat of oil.
Trying out the first jack - one down and only another ninety nine to go ...
At this point all that I am really trying to do is to make a first attempt at determining the most appropriate "on" and "off" positions for each register.
The case with the lid open showing the shellac finish on the inside of the lid. Overall I am pleased with most aspects of the case decoration - the natural wood finish just slightly tinted by the shellac is exactly what I was looking for and is a nice contrast to the deep red color of the outside of the case. The one thing that I am not completely happy with is the outside surface of the lid. The vertical walls of the case are very forgiving of my less then perfect painting technique, but the large flat surface of the lid shows up every defect and I will probably end up repainting it one more time once everything else is completely finished.
With the jacks all cut to length it is time to start voicing.
The white damper cloth in this picture is what was supplied with the kit but it just didn't feel quite the way that I wanted it to so I ended up using some very slightly thicker red cloth that was left over from the previous instrument.
The back 8' is now in and voiced sufficiently to be playable. I have it sitting pretty much as close under the strings as possible and still a little "over voiced". The touch feels about right and it is clear that this instrument wants to be loud ... In fact the whole instrument feels very "live" and resonant - so much so that voicing was made difficult by the sympathetic vibrations from all of the undamped strings - I realized quite late in the process that I could just lay some towels over the offending strings and that helped a lot. Once all of the dampers are installed things should quieten down a lot but I suspect that there will still be quite a few random noises and vibrations what will have to be tracked down.
I found your blog in a 'google' a few days ago. I have been interested in this TPW kit for years. I am grateful that you documented your build. It caused me to actually overcome my aversion data mining sites like this and subscribe so I could thank you.
ReplyDeleteAt this point it's a foregone conclusion that I'll soon be $7300 poorer but a lifetime richer within a week. Marc Ducornet owes you for a sale. :)
I've been through most of your entries, but I think that now I have an account, I'll go through backwards and leave comments that I had, as I have time to do so.
First up: I have four cats and I don't think all of them combined mass to your one. That guy is impressive.
-klr
Thanks for the feedback! I did hope that this blog might be of use to someone else who was contemplating building one of these instruments. Please do post more comments and ask any questions that you might have. One thing to consider carefully about the TPW instrument is that it only goes up to c3 while the Zuckermann goes to d3 - those extra two notes do make quite a difference to what you can play on it although if you are only interested in 16th and 17th century repertoire it shouldn't be too much of a problem. I have toyed with the idea of building a C/E - d3 keyboard with split keys for F# and G# for the PW instrument but so far it is no more than an idea ...
DeleteI went through your Zuckerman build blog again. Best pic: cat peering into the soundboard hole.
ReplyDeleteGiven that you're not quite done with the TPW kit, could you give your thoughts, "compare and contrast", the two kits? Likes, dislikes, preferences, etc.?
I will do that but it probably won't be for another week or so.
DeleteCan the registers be individually disengaged to facilitate tuning? I'd think the a-historical hole in the left cheek for the guides should at least allow for the right plucking jacks to be slid out of the way (yet still allow for damping). Tuning tips welcome.
ReplyDeleteYes, the registers are intended to be movable although there are no levers to control them. There are small wooden blocks screwed to the top the register at each end which can be adjusted to set the position and you can easily arrange for either or both of the registers to be movable or fixed.
DeleteWhat did you finish your keys with? You mentioned oil for the sharps. That pretty much restricts it to a drying oil of which tung and boiled linseed are the most common.
ReplyDeleteAside: the close up of the keys comforted me to see they were sawed out freehand and are about as good as I can do.
I used the same oil based finish on all of the woodwork including the keys and as a topcoat over the milk paint - "Tried and True Varnish Oil" which is almost entirely boiled linseed oil with a very small amount of varnish and quite a lot of marketing.
DeleteAs far as I could tell by looking at the saw marks the cuts between the front of the natural keys were done with a narrow kerf blade on a table saw (there were some telltale curved burn marks on the sides of some of the keys) while the backs of the keys were cut apart on a band saw.
Sometimes I come here just to tickle my eyeballs with the photos. Beautiful job on an instrument that fairly shouts FRESCOBALDI. lol I think it was Ed Kottick who quipped about some Italian instruments dripping tomato paste. This would be one, especially given its color. :)
ReplyDeleteSome random questions. I see there is a slot all the way around just inside the front. Is that for a detached fallboard? I can't recall seeing one, just the lid and flap.
Have you quilled the front register yet?
Doh! I'm blind. The fallboard is in place in a few of the pics, especially noticeable in the one with the jacks lined in the holder board.
ReplyDeleteSo I stumbled upon your photo albums on Picasa. Can you provide a bit of info on harpsichords #2 and #3? They appear to both be French doubles. What is the unseen #1?
ReplyDeleteEar scratches to Isis.
#2 and #3 are the same instrument - a Zuckermann French double that I bought in January 2010 as a "finished" instrument. I bought it from the person who "finished" it which, as best I can tell, only involved stringing, voicing and painting the case. Of those three activities they did a better job of painting the case than anything else but, unfortunately, they painted it entirely in black so one of the first things that I did was to repaint the inside of the flap and the lid in red which is what you see in the #3 pictures. The original voicing was really bad with the front 8' and the 4' overplucking terribly and being essentially unplayable. Kathy Perl from San Francisco revoiced the entire instrument for me which, for the most part, just involved cutting down the existing plectra on the 8's but the 4' was so bad that we requilled it completely and Kathy voiced it from scratch.
DeleteThe result is quite a nice instrument although the back 8' is, perhaps, a little lacking in character.
Any thoughts if the lackluster register is due to the design itself or the implementation of that particular instrument? There could well be a French in my future so my ears are open.
DeleteGot word my kit is ready and will ship in a week or so. Of course the first thing I get to do is sticker everything for a few months to acclimate to my climate. The other day the relative humidity was 4%.
ReplyDeleteOuch! 4% RH is horribly low - I guess I am lucky that where I am in California the RH indoors stays between about 35% and 55% for most of the year.
DeleteAnyway, yes, you will definitely want to let the wood adjust to its new surroundings for a couple of weeks. That will give you time to read the construction manual from cover to cover a few times.
Actually I do have one suggestion for you. Apart from all of the obvious things (reading, understanding and following the instructions carefully and being as accurate as possible in assembling the instrument) I think that one of the most important things that you can do is to practice certain operations as much as possible on scrap wood before attempting them on the real instrument. The kinds of things that I am thinking about are bending and fitting the bridge to the soundboard and marking out and drilling the holes for the tuning pins, bridge pins and hitch pins.
I did all of this with scraps of wood and it was very helpful, but it occurs to me that it would be even more useful to construct a mock up of the top octave of the instrument that you could use for all of these things. It doesn't need to be very sophisticated - just a base board onto which you can attach a suitable piece of wood to represent the wrestplank and one to represent the soundboard and a couple of pieces of walnut to represent the bridge and the nut.
An octave mock up is a great idea. That's the area I'm most fuzzy about. The way I see it, the hitch pins, bridge pins, nut pins, tuning pins and register positions are all independently movable and need to result in sub-millimeter precision in the end or it'll never play right.
ReplyDeleteMy kit arrived last Friday. I will be going through your blog from the beginning again with extra care and comments/questions.
ReplyDeleteHi MD, I started work on my kit over Christmas break. I thought of photo documenting it but, really, it looks just like yours so there really isn't a point to duplication.
ReplyDeleteThe case / interior bracing is complete and I'm now getting serious about the soundboard. It looks straight forward except for the bridge. Did you use nails for that or clamps only? I wonder because I noticed in some of your photos you also have wide throat Bessy clamps and they seem sufficient to me to glue the bridge. I'm thinking of at most 2 nails to locate the bent bridge ends and clamp the rest.
I used nails to clamp the bridge. I did experiment with some different approaches to this but ended up using nails. If you have steam bent the bridge you will, indeed only need about 3 nails to locate it accurately so the initial placement isn't too difficult and then, once the bridge is in place you can add the additional nails for clamping. I drilled 1/16" holes for the nails and used slightly larger nails than the ones supplied with the kit - something like 1 1/4" #17 wire nails, I think. I did make special pads for them out of MDF rather than cardboard - cut a shallow groove in it so that it would fit nicely over the top of the bridge. It's worth putting some wax paper under the soundboard before you glue the bridge on because a little glue will seep through the nail holes and you don't want the soundboard to end up glued to the bench.
ReplyDeleteIf you do decide to use clamps you probably want to run strips of wood across the soundboard and clamp them to the bench on either side rather than trying to use the clamps directly on the bridge. Whatever you decide to do I would practice it with some scrap material before trying it for real.
Actually. now that I think about it I *did* glue the nut onto the wrestplank using clamps - no nails at all - just a couple of blocks of wood clamped in strategic places to locate it in the right place. It worked, but it was more trouble than it was worth and I found it was difficult to get the clamps to apply pressure effectively. Whatever you decide to do I would try it with the nut first before tackling the bridge.
DeleteThanks for your input. I plan to pre-bend all bentside pieces with the possible exception of the case bottom molding. The hitchpin molding is already bent, so I don't have to do it. I'll mock up a few different clamping schemes before doing them for real.
ReplyDeleteI think I've run across a manufacturing defect in my kit. One of the 3 walnut moldings that spans the instrument spine-to-cheek (two on the wrest plank, one on the soundboard) is grossly too short - like 20(!) cm too short. I haven't looked into the situation in detail yet - I only ran across it when I fished all the many moldings out of the box and quasi-placed them in the partially completed instrument. But I'm pretty sure it's a problem. It doesn't help that the instruction manual gives dimensions for all the molding pieces *except* the three that go side-to-side. So it goes.
Greetings. I have greatly enjoyed reading your blog. I have found it very helpful in figuring out what I'm supposed to do. I found a Burton Harpsichord Kit in a closet but there were no directions. So I'm winging it. Would you be willing to visit my blog and help me identify a few parts I cannot figure out yet?
ReplyDeletehttp://davidcbrinson.blogspot.com/
Hi md, I dropped in to see if you'd officially finished your build series. Not there yet, I see. :) My build was rudely interrupted a bit after my last post by my employer shutting down our entire site, leaving us all out on the street. I found new work 800 miles away in the Eugene, OR area, meaning a move, buy a property, sell a property, yada, yada.
ReplyDeleteMy partially build harpsichord made the move intact and is now acclimating to humid OR from arid UT. I should be settled enough to resume building in the summer.
A big plus here early music wise is being only 2 hours out of Portland. There are also several builders in the area. Owen Daly is half and hour up the road. It will be nice once I get time for such things again.
Hope all is well with you and your instruments.
-Keith
MOHEGAN ODDS - Mapyro
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