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!
I just thought I’d give a brief mention to a new tool I tried out today. As you may have already seen on my sister site: A Psimple Psaltery, I use a rotary tool to put notches in the tops of the hitch pins on all my bowed psalteries.
Today I used a new rotary tool for the notching: a Dremel Stylus. (Model # 1100-01, which is the only model of stylus available from Dremel, as far as I know…)
The verdict: I love it. In the above picture, you can see how small it is, with the bowed psaltery that I’ve just been working on in the background. What you probably can’t see in the picture is the perfect notches on that psaltery that were just cut with the Stylus.
The Dremel Stylus is small, lightweight, and well-balanced. I really like how much control it gives me in doing fine detail work like this. The variable speed is a plus too, though I’ll mostly be using it at full speed anyway.
I now own 5 different rotary tools, both corded and cordless, from Dremel, B & D, and Ryobi. This new one is without a doubt my favorite. About the only thing that I don’t think the stylus would be superior at is in very heavy/rough work, which is when I will bring out a corded tool; but in almost all other regards, I find it excellent.
I think one of the biggest advantages in a tool like this is the lithium ion battery. These new generation batteries run longer, and are much lighter than traditional NiCad or NiMH batteries. They also stay charged longer between uses, and can be charged in the middle of a cycle – IE before the battery is dead, or after only slight use. I really like the fact that this Dremel comes with a charging cradle, and since the battery can be charged at any time, it basically ensures that whenever I pick the tool up, it’s ready to go.
Here’s a tip for any woodworkers or luthiers out there: if you’re at all like me, you’re always grabbing for a writing instrument to mark a board. Oftentimes they get “misplaced” or knocked around while working on a project. (I go through quite a number of pencils in any given week while making bowed psalteries.)
Well, as you can see from the photo on the left, here’s my cheap, somewhat quirky solution. Stash a whole bunch of pencils or other writing utencils in the miter tracks of your power tools. You could put pens, pencils, chalk, crayons, etc. in the standard miter tracks that come on many table saws and bandsaws. They sit below the surface of the table, and don’t interfere with regular cutting operations (unless you’re using a jig that makes use of the track, of course). Plus, they’re always in plain site and easy to find.
This has been another groundbreaking tip from Phantasy Psalteries. 
(And no, in case you were wondering from the photo, I’m not a Clevland Browns fan – it’s just a random pencil that I had lying around.)
To the left you can see the two things that I use to fill the pores in various woods, (in this case, Cocobolo), before applying the finish.
1. Medium viscosity CA glue.
2. A deck of playing cards.
What I do is drizzle the CA glue somewhat sparingly over the wood surface to be filled, (a little CA glue goes a long way), and then just use a playing card to level and spread the glue throughout the entire surface of the wood. I also use a box fan on my work table to prevent my eyes from watering up from the fumes.
I use shellac to seal the wood first, so less CA glue is wasted and absorbed into the wood fibers. (Multiple applications can sometimes be necessary.) And in this case, with Cocobolo, it was just about a necessity to seal the wood first, because Cocobolo’s colors will leach into the finish (or pore filler) and taint the nearby wood. In this case, the white lines on the purfling would’ve turned orange if I hadn’t (gingerly) sealed the wood before filling the pores.
To the left you can see the wood surface just after I’ve filled the pores. (The actual color is just a bit redder in person.) The surface will obviously be uneven, but once the CA glue is fully dried, I will go back over it with a cabinet scraper, and/or sandpaper and level things off. Once the wood’s pores are glassy smooth and filled to my liking, I like to let the entire psaltery sit overnight before starting to apply the finish. This ensures that all the solvents and chemicals within the CA glue won’t get trapped under the finish.
I love CA glue as a pore filler because, unlike most pore fillers which are colored, CA is completely transparent and lets the natural beauty of the wood show through. Take a look at an example of a finished Cocobolo psaltery, with its pores filled and a gloss finish applied and buffed.
So, what does all of this stuff weigh??? Here’s some of my own measurements, to help you get a perspective on things:
So, you can clearly see, just the “extras” alone are responsible for about 1 pound, 5 ounces of weight. So, even an ultralight psaltery will weigh over 2 pounds when finished. I think it would be quite difficult to get below this number on a 30-string psaltery! (Assuming the sides are at least 1 1/2″ tall, and the length is over 23″.)
Being at the low end of the spectrum, it becomes very hard to achieve even a 5% reduction in overall weight. It is, however, very easy to make things heavier, and by much more than a 5% increase! 
I was busy gluing together strips of mother-of-pearl (MOP) to form a rosette, and thought I’d take a picture of the process:
You can see from the picture that MOP obviously does not come in giant pre-manufactured rolls because it is harvested from the shells of small mollusks – so it’s more like 1″ long strips – and all of the little strips have to be glued together into a continuous strip, along with adding a black and white border of purfling on each side
This long strip will then be cut, mitered, and reglued into the standard 5-sided shape that I use for rosettes, and then inlaid into the soundboard. It is for another “Atlantis” bowed psaltery I am working on. (And yes, you will notice that the strip is being glued together with lowly clothespins, slightly modified.)
Shortly after this picture was taken, I came very close to gluing my fingers together! I still haven’t done that yet, but I expect to soon, as I can be quite careless with the initial gluing. (I use cyanoacrylate ester (CA) glue to adhere the shell strips together, which is basically just a fancy name for super glue.) Thankfully, I also keep a bottle of CA solvent nearby, to undo any bonds that turn out to be *ahem* less than handy…
Here you can see how the trim that borders the top and bottom of the psaltery (also called the “binding”) gets attached.
The psaltery in the picture is a spruce top, with walnut back and sides, and hard maple binding.
You can clearly see the blue masking tape contrasting with the wood. Pulled tight in both directions, the tape does a good job of holding the binding in the slot until the glue dries. Gluing binding can be a tricky endeavor because you need adequate pressure in two directions – both downward and sideways pressure simultaneously.
Low tack masking tape is used to avoid damaging the wood surface when the tape is removed. Also, I intentionally make the binding a bit over-sized and then route/sand it flush with the surface of the psaltery afterward.
A while back I became aware of an interesting instrument: a glass bowed psaltery. (You can see for yourself here – about 3/4 the way down on the right.)
Now, reasoning that the bowed psaltery has sort of a “glassy” tone, you’d think that an all-glass psaltery would be a great idea. It perhaps would have a sort of “mystical” sound to it that nothing else could match. (According to the builder, the psaltery linked to above was made from both glass and acrylic.)
Well, as luck would have it, I used to work with both glass and acrylic when I built aquariums as a hobby. And so, I decided to try this out myself, just as an experiment. Actually, I only used a glass top, so I was able to convert an existing wood psaltery into a glass-topped one by simply removing the soundboard and making a few modifications.
I used a wetsaw and cut out the triangular shape, then I made a circular soundhole with a diamond-tipped holesaw. Just for effect, I used a dremel and etched patterns into the underside of the glass. I set the glass into the psaltery (it was simply held in from the pressure of the strings/bridge, rather than glued/siliconed), and prepared to play this “mystical” instrument.
The result?
When making a bowed psaltery for the first time, one of the most tedious tasks is laying out and measuring all the pins. Thankfully, there is an easy way to do this: with a jig.
Basically, I took a 1/2″ piece of plywood, cut it to the size of the psaltery, and inserted sharp self-piercing sheet metal screws where all of the tuning pins should go. It takes some extra time to make this jig, but once it is finished, it greatly accelerates the pin layout process.
Since the screws I used were 5/8″ long (in 1/2″ plywood), this leaves sharp 1/8″ long points at all the exact locations of the tuning pins.
All that is necessary is to carefully align the jig on top of the psaltery, and lightly tap on the jig with a mallet.Viola! 30 pin locations are instantly and perfectly transferred to the top of the psaltery. And since it is an actual indent, and not a pencil mark, it is that much easier to align the drill bit with the dimple.
You can see this jig at work sitting atop a psaltery that I recently finished. (I use a different jig for the hitch pins to allow more flexibility in the positioning, but this one works great for the tuning pins.)
When applying the finish to a bowed psaltery, it can go a lot faster if you can do both the front and the back at the same time. Ordinarily, with a psaltery being two-sided, you’d have to finish one side, let the finish harden, and then finish the other side.
What I’ve found that is helpful is to temporarily insert just three “extra” tuning pins partially into the hitch pin holes near the corners of the psaltery. (You’ll have to drill the holes for the hitch pins before you begin the finishing process.) Click on the thumbnail picture to get a better view. 
What these pins do is act as a standoff for the rest of the instrument, so the finished top doesn’t touch any part of the table. From here you can proceed to finish the back and sides.
I just thought I’d share some of my thoughts/musings on how different types of wood and their working properties come into play when making a bowed psaltery.
Dampening – This is a term that I hear thrown around a lot. It is usually used in a bad way: “you don’t want the wood to dampen any of the strings’ vibrations…” and so forth. I would define dampening, in regard to musical instrument woods, as the measure of a wood’s tendency to lose (or conversely, to retain) a musical vibration.
For the sake of example, a material that has a very low amount of dampening would be a tuning fork. You strike it, and it retains the vibrations and gives off a sustained ring. The opposite of this would be a rubber band. You strike it (or fling it!) and the energy is instantly transferred and absorbed by the rubber band.
So, is dampening a bad thing?
Here’s a random building tip:
The fit between the bridge and the soundboard on a bowed psaltery is important, and should be as snug as possible. Even though all the strings are pressing down on the bridge, if the bridge is in any way uneven, firm contact will not be made.
One technique that is commonly used on stringed instruments is shown below – and adapted to the bowed psaltery:
Basically, a sheet of sandpaper is clamped to the top of the psaltery, and the bridge is carefully stroked in one direction away from the clamps. You can flip the bridge over and see how much of it is being sanded. If the sandpaper is only making contact with the bridge in a few places, this means that things are still uneven. Once the sandpaper is sanding away material along the entire length of the bridge it is ready to be fitted to the psaltery.
