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.

Finishing the case

The last two months have been spent finishing the case.

The first thing to go in after the soundboard are the moldings that go around the edge of the soundboard and the wrestplank.

You can't see it, but the tail hitchpin rail is there under all of those clamps.

The bentside hitchpin rail gets more clamps than anything else. I used a combination of the clamping blocks that were used for the soundboard installation to clamp downwards and C clamps to clamp horizontally against the bentside.

The wrestplank moldings were easy by comparison.

Here is what it looks like once everything is in place.

Now the holes for the hitchpins are drilled and then the cypress veneer that helps to create the illusion of an "inner" harpsichord sitting inside an "outer" case is glued to the inside of the case.

The lid has a piece of molding fitted along the curved edge of the bentside. This was steam bent into shape and clamped using a similar arrangement to the one that I used for the moldings on the case.

These brass hinges will attach the flap which covers the keyboard and the wrestplank to the main part of the lid.

The jackrail slides into a slotted blocks of wood that are fitted to the case. Traditional Italian instruments of this type have a rather elaborate scroll carved at the front of this block - something like this - elegant isn't it?
Well, actually, I happen to think that it is rather ugly - it is the one thing on Italian harpsichords that I really don't like and, since this is not supposed to be an exact copy of an historic original I intend to replace it with something simpler.
The picture below shows the jackrail support block as it came with the kit and two alternate shapes that I experimented with. In the end I went with the very simple shape at the bottom - just a rectangular block with a cove routed around the edge.

Here they are fitted to the cypress veneer that lines the inside of the case place.

The interior of the case gets painted first before fitting the last molding which runs along the top edge of the cypress veneer.

With the cap molding in place all of the cypress is finished with a rub on  blend of oil and varnish.

The nameboard fits in front of the wrestplank above the keyboard and the top molding on it has to be mitred to fit with the cap molding that runs around the inside of the case.

Here are a few more closeups of the moldings

Finally - all of the case woodwork is done.