carving

I cut a notch out of the bottom of the post, that will fit over the rib down the center of the soundboard








I started working on the carving here. It will probably take a while, but is fairly straight forward. Just the same little knot all the way up both sides

neck

Ahh... it's been a while since I posted. but as you can see in this hideous photo I finished cutting out the neck-forepost and here I am gluing on the "neck knob." This will stablize where the neck attaches to the body of the harp.








Once the over all shape is cut and sanded I can draw my design on .....

And anoyingly repeat it all the way up both sides!

A couple of months ago I did this drawing as an idea of what I wanted the front of the harp to look like. I based it somewhat loosely on this ancient viking figure-head from the Osburg burial site.

Next I drew my variations over the plans, cut them out and traced them onto a piece of 1 1/8" cherry

I'm conecting the neck and forepost with a mortise and tendon joint. Here the tendon is half finished. In the second picture I'm cutting out the mortise slot.


The joints are finished and glued.

bindings

I wanted to use ebony for my edging strips, but it was really expensive. I wanted something darker than walnut, so I finally found some ..... zim-something zam.... some mexican hard wood that started with a Z, anyway it was dark and cheap. Clamping this on was fairly easy, though I forgot to take pictures of the process.



Here is the box with the binding pieces glued in place but not sanded yet.
I'll try to post a picture tomorrow of the finished sanded box.

Rubber Bands

I cut a groove in the top and bottom pieces to accommodate the bottom rib of the sound board.











The plans recommended building
this little gluing ladder-thingy, which
is actually a good idea since it allows
your clamps to put even pressure all
along both sides. A bajillion rubber
bands provided the majority of the
clamping pressure, supplemented by
a few trusty red clamps.

soundboard

Now its time to make the soundboard and finish the soundbox. Back in the beginning before I even made the sides Dad and I glued up a big expanse of sitca spruce about a 1/4 " thick and big enough for several soundboards. The spruce we special ordered from a lumber company in Michigan. Sitca spruce is generally the best for resonating parts of instruments such as guitar or violin or harp fronts, because of its good ... resonating qualities. we then sanded this piece down to a mere 1/8"





Here I traced the shape of the soundbox onto the piece and roughed it out with the bandsaw. then cut it to exact size with the table saw. To make a fragile piece even more fragile I sanded the small end down more to about 3/32. (not fun)







Next I glued on the string ribs which strengthen the soundboard. These are thin stait grained maple strips glued front and
back.

The next step was to make and install the back bracing strip ( basically two strips of light weight wood that run along the inside edges of the box hooking the back and sides together).

-sorry about the rubbish photos-





Here the top and bottom pieces are are glued to the back.



Next I glued on the sides, a bit tricky trying to get enough clamps on it but it worked in the end.



And here it is all sanded and smooth.