About a week ago, the thought occurred to me that I could make my own tuning wrench handles. Since then, I’ve been itching to give it a go.
“But what kind of wood should I use for the handle?” I thought.
Well, I resolved that question by making my first tuning wrench handle out of something entirely different from wood: a Banksia Pod.
You’ll quickly notice from the picture that a Banksia Pod is really weird looking! Actually, I think it is somewhat similar to our regular old pine-cones here in the States, except these things come from Australia. They are mostly solid all the way through, except for the obvious holes throughout its body. Anyhow, you can see one of them mounted on my lathe and ready to be transformed into a handle. (And it made a big, furry, fuzzy, crusty, dusty, crackly mess!)
So, after a time that took longer than I am willing to admit, I came out with this handle. (See picture.) I like how the holes look like all sorts of little mouths, which gives the handle an interesting look, and also some traction for you hand.
Best of all, with this new handle, I was able to make a tuning wrench that was as long as I wanted. (Which was quite a bit longer than any of the other bowed psaltery tuning wrenches out there.) Basically, a longer handle means more leverage, and thus more sensitive and precise tuning adjustments – which is a good thing.
You can see from the picture on the left, that I’ve had a “lengthy” progression of tuning wrenches over the years. The one at the top is of course the newest addition and also the longest. The middle guy is the wrench that I currently include with all my regular bowed psaltery orders. (Still quite long at around 8″ total length.) And the bottom one is my very first tuning wrench model, also know as The Worst Tuning Wrench Ever. (I don’t like it because it is short and ugly, and has a square indent that makes it hard to fit it on the tuning pins.)
I hope to perhaps someday offer custom tuning wrenches with all my bowed psalteries, or at least by special request. I think it would be nice to have a tuning wrench from matching woods from the psaltery, made as long or as short as needed.