I’ve finally competed the 3 octave bowed psaltery. It’s nearly three feet long, almost a foot wide, and 3 inches tall. It’s quite a bit larger than my regular 2 1/2 octave psalteries. But, it can play notes a full octave lower than the standard model: down to G2!

You can take a listen in the sound clips page, about halfway down.

The psaltery has 3 embedded steel inserts in the back, and you can quickly attach the mounting plate via 3 thumbscrews. Then, the mounting plate has an additional threaded insert that allows it to be mounted onto a camera tripod. Otherwise, you can just remove the plate and play it without a tripod. It’s a bit of a reach to play the longest strings, but it’s not very heavy considering its size: it came out weighing under 5 pounds!

Once a year, I try to make an extra-fancy bowed psaltery that I list on the for sale page as a “Phantasy” psaltery. (For instance, one such psaltery from 2007 can be seen in my gallery: it’s the top two pictures on the page, with the tiered rose design.)

This year, I’m working on another one, and you can see the progress of the top thusfar. It has two inlaid interlocking triangles that form a star-of-david pattern. Also, the top is a single-piece of figured bearclaw Sitka Spruce. (The back and sides aren’t visible in the picture, but they’re made of Macassar Ebony.)

I hope to have this psaltery all finished and up for sale in about a month.

I just heard about a guy who turns giant vases and similar vessels out of enormous 2,000+ pound tree trunks. And on top of all that, his Bloomington shop is only about 10 minutes away from my house in Minnetonka. (Haven’t visited yet…)

Check out this video. His website is http://virgiltreeart.com/

One of the things from the video that I noticed was his finishes. We have a lot in common in that regard, because I love shellac too. Also, I use ten coats (which are subsequently buffed out) on all my instruments just like he uses on his vessels.

Well, that’s one thing we have in common…

I’m working on a new edition of “Candyshop,” and one of the features that I wanted to have was a giant rosette ring that spilled over the sides of the psaltery’s soundboard.

First, I had to cut out a giant disc. In this case, I used some musk burl veneer that had been laminated to another layer of burl veneer for stiffness and strength. The burl disc pictured to the left is about 7″ in diameter!

From there, I just had to cut a second hole on the inside to form a “doughnut” shape with the burl veneer. I was also planning on using a spare (non-standard) laser-cut rose pattern that I had on hand that sort of resembles a flower.

You can see a loose layout of both the giant rosette ring, and the rose on top of the Sitka Spruce soundboard. Note how the rosette ring hangs off the side of the soundboard: once the binding is in place, it will only be a partial circle.

I also later added some Purpleheart and Pink Ivory wooden dots in the wide open are between the rose and the edge of the rosette ring. (I don’t have a picture of this yet…)

Here’s some picture of a custom psaltery that I recently completed.

The top is Curly Redwood, with a laser-cut Padauk rose and a Curly Maple rosette ring. The binding and bridge are also made of Curly Maple. I love the look of curly woods: it almost reminds me of draped fabric, and seems to beg you to reach out and touch it to see if it’s really flat.

This psaltery also has black pins, and phosphor bronze wound strings.

For the back/sides, African Wenge was used, which is a very dark, elegant, (and resonant) wood.

This psaltey also features a herringbone backstrip, a tripod mount insert, and a rear soundhole.

The backstrip blends in very well with the Wenge, and almost makes it look as if the psaltery could be unzipped.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m in the process of developing a 3-octave psaltery. After crunching the numbers in a spreadsheet, and drawing up the plans in CAD, I was just about ready to go…

Except I’d never gone this low before: that is, I’d never strung a psaltery to be played as low as the instrument that I was proposing. (I’m planning to have the 3-octave model start on G2, a full octave lower than my current model.)

So, I made a test-model. It wasn’t rocket science. I just took a big slab of some Ash (or was it Elm?) that had been collected from my yard, and popped a couple of tuning pins in each side. After adding a basic bridge and a wound string, I was ready to start testing the string lengths, tension, and tone.

The main reason for this sidetrack is that I would imagine it would be a real drag to build, drill, and string an entire 35″ long psaltery, only to have the lowest strings sound bad because I didn’t double check to see if all the stringing “rules” that I’d discovered through trial and error on my smaller psalteries were still valid on a larger scale.

So far, so good.

I was going through some of my old notes and drawings, and I laughed at some of my early thoughts. Some ideas were good, and turned out really well. Some ideas were, well, not so good. (Like experimenting with glass soundboards…)

One feature that stood out quite early was the actual shape of the psaltery;s body. It may come as a surprise to some that I struggled on this, going back and forth between a simple triangle (as the psaltery seen on A Psimple Psaltery), and the five-sided shape that I now use pretty much exclusively today. But back then, it wasn’t so clear.

Early drawing of a 3-sided model

Here’s one such drawing that I made back in 2006. It’s simple, but the fact that I went to this trouble at all shows that I was seriously considering the plan.

In retrospect, I’m glad that I’ve stuck with the design that I’m currently using.

In an overhaul that probably took me way too long to finish, I’ve re-made the custom ordering page, which is titled “Find Your Own Psaltery” on the Phantasy Psalteries navigation menu.

I’m hoping that the new order form will be more user-friendly, as it now uses larger font, and is mostly visually oriented. I’ve tried to use less words, and more pictures—though there are still links to informational pages on the order form.

So if you were thinking about placing a custom order: don’t be shy!

Pictured to the left is another custom bowed psaltery that I’m working on. I’ve just applied the first few sealer coats of shellac, and the figure in the wood comes alive.

And, that’s what I call curly! The top is curly redwood, the binding is curly maple, and the rosette ring is also curly maple. The central rose is Padauk.

Today I finished up on two custom-ordered bowed psalteries, probably the first time ever I’ve finished two in the same day.

The first one finished was the one with the Western Red Cedar top and Figured Cherry back.

The second one has a dragonfly rose, along with Ebony binding and bridge, and ammonite shell halves inlaid into the Chechen sides.

As you can see from the links within this entry, I’ve posted pictures of both psalteries before, but I also like to add a final picture with the strings on to get a better sense of the finished product.

To the left is a picture of the handle of a custom tuning wrench that was made to match the woods of a custom bowed psaltery. The main body of the wrench (and the psaltery as well) is made of figured Myrtle. The wrench has a strip of Mango in the middle, which was taken from the same board as the psaltery’s top. Also, it’s hard to see it in the current picture, but the base cap is made of Cocobolo, which matches the binding/bridge of the psaltery.

Here’s an overall shot of both the wrench and the psaltery. I’ve got to admit that it’s one of the best looking psalteries I’ve seen in a while! (And it sounds great too.)

In this picture you can also see the Cocobolo base cap on the tuning wrench.

I was scraping a centerstrip of herringbone-style banding flush with a Wenge back when I thought it might make a cool picture.

When a card scraper is sharp, and it hits the back just right, it will peel off a nice layer of material. Here, it was peeling off thin layers of the herringbone pattern.

Such a simple, yet versatile too: long live the card scraper!

Here’s another update on the custom bowed psaltery that featured the dragonfly rose posted earlier.

The picture to the left shows the psaltery tipped up on its side to show a clearer shot of both the back and side.

The back/sides are made of Chechen, the binding is Ebony, and the small shell inlay that you see on the corner is actually an extinct mollusk called an Ammonite. I buy these fossils as matching shell halves and offer them as an inlay option.

In a previous post, I mentioned a bowed psaltery made of figured cherry and verawood that I was working on as a custom order.

Here’s the top of the psaltery so far. It’s Western Red Cedar with a curly white oak rosette and note markers made of walnut and white oak.