• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Seven Heirlooms - and one for my great niece, too.

@Malc2098 :

I wonder if you expect to be able to discern a difference in tonal quality of each instrument given the different wood species used ?

And to what extent, or even if its perceivable, does the pore filling and selection of final finishing media have on final tone ?
Is it known whether the refinishing of older instruments changes the tone significantly ?

I know very little about the tonal crafting of acoustic instruments but even after years of hearing abuse around Jet engines and loud equipment I can still discern a difference in the mellow blending and purer tones emanating from the output of some of the renowned luthiers when showcased.
 
Sycamore has become one of my favourite woods after making the bench and the recent drawer box. It really is beautiful and those instruments (including the pine one) look lovely.
 
CHJ said:
@Malc2098 :

I wonder if you expect to be able to discern a difference in tonal quality of each instrument given the different wood species used ?

And to what extent, or even if its perceivable, does the pore filling and selection of final finishing media have on final tone ?
Is it known whether the refinishing of older instruments changes the tone significantly ?

I know very little about the tonal crafting of acoustic instruments but even after years of hearing abuse around Jet engines and loud equipment I can still discern a difference in the mellow blending and purer tones emanating from the output of some of the renowned luthiers when showcased.
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That's out of my pay scale, I'm afraid. I would be surprised if there's much tonal difference between finishes of instruments as small as these, as they are generally strummed. But, a bowed violin, could sound different with different finishes.

However, I think the choice of timber, and its thickness and its bracing would all have a contribution to its sound.
 
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I've heard about in the olden days the old cabinet makers used shark skin to finish wood before varnish, but following a violin luthier's channel, I found out about using glass.

1DAF4A9B-D20E-4758-B9F3-0A6040AB3109.jpeg

Sorry about the rubbish focus, but you can see I'm using a glove on one hand to wipe away the shavings.

I'm not going to tell you about how to create the scraping pieces from 2mm glass, I'm just a humble beginner with no experience except today.

But, by golly it works for me.
 
Next skill, mastering cutting curved contours in glass to match profiles requiring scraping. 😈
 
CHJ said:
Next skill, mastering cutting curved contours in glass to match profiles requiring scraping. 😈
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Actually, they get quite close to it.

But, I can scape a compound curve with a straight edge, and they show scraping with a non-exact curve, convex and concave.
 
OK. All seven necks and all seven bodies have been pore filled with one coat of finishing epoxy and scraped back to wood.

521D85C7-7088-4F3B-8376-8988BD1027E4.jpeg


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All that is left to fill on the bodies are the rosettes, the Padauk has quite an open grain. They're curing overnight.

After that I will have start shaping the bone saddles and nuts.
 
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Now all the pores are filled, even on the rosettes, and scrpped and sanded back to wood, I can do no more to the necks and bodies till the outdoor temperature reaches and exceeds room temperature, when I can spray them with nitrocellulose clear gloss. Till then they stay hung up out of the way in the workshop.

But I still have little things to do like shaping the bone saddles and nuts. So I'll start with the saddles.

I buy the bone blanks at 3mm thick. I have already milled the bridges with a 3mm slot for the saddle.

BA33E935-118D-4AD9-B22F-B0A3D9A22FE7_1_201_a.jpeg


I cut the blank to length, give it a slight sanding on both sides so it fits without forcing and then round the ends over to fit the slot.


Then, having picked up this tip on the luthier course I took some years ago, I use the little U shaped slots in the top of a Stanley blade to shape the top of the saddle round, the bit that the strings go over.

F46E094D-3D3E-4383-9A5D-671F9E5F5FCC.jpeg


The black marks you can see are the remains of black Sharpie so that as I wear away the bone, I can see to keep the wear even and should leave a tiny black line along the middle.

After a little fettling with a fine file, it slots in a treat.

IMG_4509.JPG

It's quite high at the moment, and I shall leave it like that till after the bridges have been glued to the bodies and the instruments assembled and strung, then I can file/sand away the bottom till I get to the correct height.

I may not have mentioned before, but each of these instruments will be fitted with a piezo under-saddle pickup, so the fitting has to be spot on so the vibrations can travel through the bone to the pickup with no gaps.

One down, six more to go.
 
Blimey, Malcolm, this really is astonishing stuff. I'm so very impressed.

I'm also seriously impressed with my ignorance, because I recognise almost none of the terms you use for the various parts.
 
Mike G said:
Blimey, Malcolm, this really is astonishing stuff. I'm so very impressed.

I'm also seriously impressed with my ignorance, because I recognise almost none of the terms you use for the various parts.
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Thanks, @Mike G . It's a language I've had to learn, too, a bit like the component parts of table.
 
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NickM said:
How do you cut the bone to length Malc? Is it a hacksaw job?
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Actually, no, @NickM . I make a face side and edge pencil mark on the bone balance at the correct length, place it in the jaws of the vice and use the vertical side of the jaws to guide my Atsuba saw through the cut. (At the end of the project I'll replace the blade.)

You're going to love this next bit! To reduce thickness to the size of the gap on the instrument neck, I use a shooting board and my jack plane. Then to to get final thickness, I have an old shooting plane with the gubbins taken out and the sole covered in self adhesive abrasive. I just give it a few strokes on the shooting board till it fits nicely in the neck.
 
That’s as much as I can do to them for now. Just got to wait until about July when the weather is warm enough to spray them.

1744BF72-DF1C-41C3-96BA-9554DCDF6ADE.jpeg

Time to get the notebook out and plan the next season.

Time then to get the laptop out and CAD design the chosen projects.

Time then to get the CNC machine out of the rafters and start machining.
 
Malc2098 said:
That’s as much as I can do to them for now. Just got to wait until about July when the weather is warm enough to spray them.

View attachment 38192

Time to get the notebook out and plan the next season.

Time then to get the laptop out and CAD design the chosen projects.

Time then to get the CNC machine out of the rafters and start machining.
Click to expand...
The waiting for better weather must drive you nuts , it would for me.;)
 
OK, I know I said I was going to take some time off from instrument making, but while I had the CNC down from the rafters I decided to include the 'spare' instrument for my great niece and milled the letters out of MoP and their pockets on the headstock. I'll glue them in tomorrow and it'll go back up on the hook waiting with the others for the warmer weather to to be able to spray them.

17DFF444-3FBD-43B5-A794-24AC6A1E8A8E_1_201_a.jpeg
 
AndyP said:
Clever and so very effective.

Did you ever decide on cases, hard or soft, for these heirlooms?
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Thanks, Andy. I've ordered, and paid for, 7 hard soft cases (or they could be soft hard cases). The supplier has sent 3, but now has no date fro availability of the remainder. They're still shown available online, but with no delivery date. Grrr.
 
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