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