Here is a custom psaltery that I’m currently working on. It has a Purpleheart back and sides, as well as Purpleheart binding. (That’s what I call a lot of purple!)
Category Archives: Building
Whole Lotta Purple
September 30, 2008 – 8:20 am
Hot Off the Press
September 10, 2008 – 11:27 am
I know I’ve been quiet lately, which is mostly due to being busy with other projects and things. But I did have time today to post an update on one of the psalteries that I am currently working on.
Here is a picture of a psaltery that is hot off the press – the drill press that is. (Excuse the poor lighting and color rendition, as it was lit by the built-in drill press light.) It is a custom order, which has curly maple for the top, back, and sides. It has just been drilled for the tuning and hitch pin holes – and the shallow holes for the cabochons should be visible too.
So much sawdust and wood chips end up inside the psaltery after the drilling phase that it almost sounds like a dried gourd when you shake it. (With little chunks of wood that can be heard bouncing around on the inside.) Thankfully, I still have to clean up the holes, level the finish, and yes, blow all of the dust/wood chips out of the body. 
Cocobolo and Spirals
July 23, 2008 – 3:24 pm
For this custom bowed psaltery, I just couldn’t resist taking a few pictures. There were just too many details. The first picture is of the top, which is made of Honduran Mahogany and also has a circular inlay of Musk Burl, which can be seen a little clearer in a previous post. The binding and bridge are made of Verawood, with the note markers of Tiger’s Eye and Black Onyx cabochons.
The next picture is of the four-piece Cocobolo back. I had written about the creation of this interesting back in another previous post. The overall shape and play of colors is intriguing, and the figure found in the sapwood is interesting as well. It’s amazing how a piece of wood that was initially too small for much of anything useful was turned into one of the primary features of the bowed psaltery.
Last of all, here is a closer picture of the Cocobolo sapwood mentioned above, along with one final feature that is unique to this psaltery: a pair of inlaid Ammonite shell halves in each of the two side corners. (Only one is visible in picture.)
Stringing a Bowed Psaltery
July 14, 2008 – 3:55 pm
I took this picture while I was in the middle of stringing a bowed psaltery. With ball-end strings, this is a fairly straight-forward affair. All the tools that are needed are a needle-nose pliers and a tuner. I also use a contact mic clipped somewhere onto the psaltery to increase the tuner’s response and accuracy.
Also, I really like using an extra long T-handle tuning wrench for winding the string on the pins and for the initial tuning. The extra leverage reduces stress on the wrist, and generally makes things go smoother.
Canarywood Bowed Psaltery
July 7, 2008 – 5:23 pm
I’ve finally got the chance to use some incredibly figured Canarywood for a bowed psaltery. I had listed a couple of back/side sets in the Treasure Trove several months ago, and was surprised that no one had yet chosen to use them on a custom psaltery. (Though several people had expressed interest.)
In the above picture you can see this Canarywood, with a great example of bookmatching on the back. It almost resembles a flame, in both shape and color. There is still no binding yet, (which will be Snakewood), so the figure will look even more pronounced once it is framed and bordered with darker wood.
Suzanne’s Psaltery
June 26, 2008 – 5:54 pm
Here’s a picture of a custom psaltery that I’m working on. The top is Mahogany, and for the rosette, I inlaid a circle of Musk Burl veneer and drilled holes into it to make a spiral shape. The size of the holes adds up to roughly the same size opening as a regular psaltery’s soundhole.
The pattern is an attempt to match the pattern of an ammonite shell. You can’t quite make it out in the photo, but there are two ammonite shell halves inlaid into the sides of the psaltery on the pinblock corners.
Custom Tuning Wrenches
June 18, 2008 – 10:35 am
I’ve decided to launch a new sub-domain of the Phantasy Psalteries website, entitled: Archimedes’ Workshop. Over the past several months, I’ve been making custom tuning wrenches just for fun, and now I feel it’s time to give them their own official home. (Two examples are shown in the picture on the left.) You can read more about the story as to how this all began here.
In a nutshell, the reason for this kind of (custom) wrench is that they’re long. It’s all about leverage: the longer the handle, the more leverage you have over the pin, (and consequently, the finer adjustments you are able to make on your musical instrument). But I also figured as long as I was going through all the trouble of making a new handle, I might as well make it beautiful too.
Now, to help kick things off and give a little insight into the work involved in making one of these wrenches, I’ve made a video: (and as you might have guessed from the lapses in the video, a custom wrench takes much longer than 4 minutes to make!)
Video: Eric Meier
Music: Kevin MacLeod
Coral Snake Binding
June 10, 2008 – 12:28 pm
Recently I’ve been working on a psaltery with a completely new style of binding. Instead of being made of one solid piece of wood, I used several different types and formed a pattern.
Oddly enough, the inspiration for this came from seeing the patterns in snakes. I think I was trying to visualize how Snakewood would look as the binding for a bowed psaltery, (which already has a snake-skin pattern found naturally in the wood), and I came up with the idea to just use different species of vibrantly colored wood to replicate this effect.
You can see from the picture on the left that the result looks quite striking. As if the brightly colored orange Padauk back and sides of the psaltery weren’t enough, the binding itself is made up of Bloodwood, Ebony, and Yellowheart.
For those curious, the snake pattern that I was trying to duplicate was a coral snake. Technically, it was a Texas Coral Snake, and I just studied pictures online, (no, I’m not any sort of snake-enthusiast), and I tried to maintain the proportions and colors as close to the original as possible.
Hopefully snakes do not own the copyright to the artistic patterns found on their skin.
Ron’s Psaltery
May 19, 2008 – 8:27 pm
Here is another “Safari” bowed psaltery that I’ve recently finished. It is nearly identical to the psaltery shown in this post, except that it has a fancier (figured/curly) Mahogany top, and a nice Cocobolo rosette. It also has bronze strings and black pins, which really match and go well with the rest of the colors on the psaltery. I really feel that the Bloodwood binding and bridge strongly defines the appearance of this psaltery.
Below you can see the striking Zebrawood back. I love the look of flat-sawn Zebrawood. And acoustically, it makes a pretty good sounding psaltery too…
Fiery Cocobolo
May 8, 2008 – 6:55 pm
Well, as promised, here are some pictures of the back of the psaltery that I have been working on.
I’ve finally got my new photography tent all set up, and this was one of the very first pictures. I’m still tweaking and perfecting things, so please bear with me. It has always been at the forefront of my mind just as to how to go about photographing a bowed psaltery. The shape is very awkward, and I never can seem to settle on one single correct viewing angle.
As for the psaltery itself, it should be evident from the title of this post what the figure on this instrument resembles. I took one extra picture of the back to show a better view of the details.
All Dressed Up…
May 5, 2008 – 8:05 pm
Here is a near-complete psaltery that looks all dressed up. It has black pins, and an ebony bridge and binding. In contrast, it also has light-colored nickel-plated strings and black and white purfling around the binding.
In case you were wondering, this is the (almost) end result of Arielle’s psaltery. All that’s left is to buff out the back and sides, (hopefully I’ll add more pictures of that too), and wait a bit longer for the finish to harden.
Fun with Perspective
April 28, 2008 – 1:02 pm
I’ve always found it somewhat humorous how easily it can be to alter the perceived length of a bowed psaltery. Since I seem to have taken pictures of all sorts of bowed psalteries already, I thought today I would have fun with it a little and take a picture from an interesting angle.
You can see from the picture on the left that changing the angle can drastically alter the perceived length of the psaltery. Yes, believe it or not, the psaltery above is actually of standard length and width.
A Trio of Rosettes
April 18, 2008 – 2:55 pm
I must admit that inlaying rosettes is one of my least favorite things to do. Accordingly, sometimes I can get a small buildup of these things before I finally get the time to actually inlay them in a soundboard.
On the left, you can see three such rosettes that are ready to adorn a bowed psaltery soundhole. From left to right: 5/16″ banding, a custom Cocobolo rosette, and a new 3-holed design I’m trying out.
Fun with Double Bookmatching
April 12, 2008 – 9:54 pm
To the left you can see the beginning of my little experiment. I had a narrow yet thick chunk of Cocobolo left from cutting the sides to Arielle’s psaltery, and I was trying to see if I couldn’t find a use for it somehow.
One thing that struck me was that it had the most beautiful sapwood, yet it was too narrow to make an entire back from it, so I decided to cut the board into four strips and bookmatch each pair of strips, to make a four-piece back. Since the sapwood (the lighter area of the wood), was so dramatic and figured, I decided to highlight that area and maximize its area on the back.
I really like how the whole back turned out once I cut out the shape of the psaltery. You can see this piece, along with a closeup shot of the sapwood area, in the Treasure Trove section of my main website.