Strings, strings, and more strings

7. March 2008 Eric

Well, after quite a prolonged shortage, I’ve finally got my shipment of wound strings! Look for a new batch of bowed psalteries to be listed on the main site: Phantasy Psalteries in the near future.

After having experimented with all sorts of strings during the beginning of the year, I really am leaning toward nickel-plated wound strings as my all-around favorite. (Pictured at left.) The only other string type that I’m still considering is bronze phosphor, which has a tone very similar to the nickel-wound strings, but with a slightly brighter tone; but they don’t last as long as the nickel-plated strings.

I’ve tried all sorts of variations of nylon and silver-plated copper with a nylon core, but in the end, I still feel that nickel plated steel strings are the best overall. I found that plain nylon strings were very mellow, but also extremely “picky” in terms of how they needed to be bowed, and tended to be very scratchy and screechy with the slightest variation in bowing technique.

With the sliver-plated strings with a nylon-fiber core, I found an interesting phenomenon: the string would shift its pitch downward as soon as the bow left the string. It’s my theory that this is due to the inner core being wrapped too loosely. They do have a lot of potential, but they are not without their roadblocks.

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High-Gloss Psaltery

28. February 2008 Eric

I took this picture right after buffing out the back of a Cocobolo bowed psaltery I am working on. As you can see from the reflection, the light bulb is a Sylvania.

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Sick as a dog

21. February 2008 Eric

Well, I’ve been sick with either the flu, or a really bad cold for most of this week. Consequently, I haven’t been able to finish any psalteries lately, but there are plenty of them on the horizon.

For now, since I am mostly bedridden, (or sometimes “office-chair-ridden”), I decided to make a little slideshow to promote all the great stuff that is available in the Treasure Trove. In case you missed it on my homepage, here it is:

 

Music: Kevin MacLeod

(Or click here to
download the video directly in .wmv format.)

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Another Safari

13. February 2008 Eric

A while back I had a few psalteries for sale that I had called “Safari” because of their somewhat wild looks. Here’s another addition to that collection.

As you can see from the picture, it is made of beautiful Zebrawood. The sides are also solid Zebrawood, versus the veneered sides on my previous psalteries.

Note also the striking Bloodwood binding.

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A Little Baby…

11. February 2008 Eric

Here’s my newest toy: it’s a little baby 4″ table saw. (With a tube of ChapStick to show the size.)

I got this small saw to help me cut the bindings for all of my bowed psalteries. A full sized tablesaw seemed too big and wasteful, and a bandsaw still gave me fairly rough cross-cuts.

So now, this little saw fills that gap in nicely. It can easily cut the miters for the binding, and still leaves a smooth, finished cut. Best of all, it doesn’t take up very much shop space.

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How ’bout Blue?

8. February 2008 Eric

Well, maybe I get bored easily, but I always like to try new things. Here you see a Quilted Maple back of a psaltery that has been tinted blue. I think this one will definitely carry the “Atlantis” name-badge.

I’m not too big of a fan of the artificial look, but it was an interesting exercise. The sides and Spruce top are colored blue also. And plain Sitka Spruce still looks plain, it’s just bluer.

It was a pain to mask off the Curly Maple binding so that there would still be a bright, clean white binding to frame the “ocean” of wood.

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Carbon Fiber Saddles

31. January 2008 Eric

I was pleasantly surprised today at the performance of a new saddle material. As a matter of fact, I found it so superior to just about all other saddle options, that I’m thinking of phasing out nearly all other materials for saddles. (Except of course using an all-wood bridge with no saddle at all, which is still my standard choice.)

Now I must give a disclaimer: I still think that using an all-wood bridge with no saddle is the best overall option for use with a bowed psaltery with wound strings. However, I know there are some out there that prefer a psaltery with just a bit more sustain - and for this, I think carbon fiber is ideal. (Not to mention it is perfect for plain steel strings as well.

What’s so great about this material? It’s both light and strong. Best of all, it’s black so it blends in well.

I was looking at the specs of carbon fiber in general, and it came very close in density to Acetal, (aka Delrin), but it’s physically much more rigid. It’s so strong that I was actually able to use a hollow tube of carbon fiber for the saddle. Once you factor in that the inner half of the saddle is hollow, the overall mass of the saddle becomes incredibly light. I put it on my gram scale and had to do a double take to see if it could possibly be this light. (To put it into perspective, a carbon fiber saddle only weighs one tenth the weight of a brass saddle, and about one third the weight of an aluminum saddle.)

In short, carbon fiber gives excellent response, (due to its minimal overall mass), and also lets the strings of the psaltery glide over the surface of the saddle. The only downside is that it tends to resist the strings from making a groove, (the entire point of a saddle), so the sustain can still be a bit prolonged. So for those wanting to keep sustain down when using wound strings, I would still advise to use an all-wood bridge for your psaltery.

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What a Difference a Little Sanding Makes…

28. January 2008 Eric

In the picture to the left you’ll see what a bowed psaltery looks like after I’ve just glued the binding on. Actually, since I’m experimenting with a new type of binding - Verawood - and the back and sides are made of Cocobolo, (all very oily and resinous woods), I chose to use CA glue to adhere the binding on this psaltery. So there are dried glue globs, glue runs, glued-on pieces of blue masking tape, and even a tiny bit of plastic from the pad of a clamp (not visible in picture), all slathered on the back of this bowed psaltery.

A lot of people don’t realize that messes can be cleaned up. The psaltery above really isn’t in that bad of a condition - I’ve seen worse.

There, you see? All better. Just a little bit of sandpaper and elbow grease was all it took. Good as new.

And now that I’ve got the initial sealer coats on the back, I’m excited about this new binding, called Verawood. You can hardly see it in the picture, but this wood turns an olive green once exposed to light and air. It has a wavy and interlocked grain that is beautiful, but also quite difficult to work with. It is also a relative of the more well known wood, Lignum Vitae (aka Ironwood or the “tree of life”), and share many of the same working characteristics. Namely, it is just about the densest and most durable of woods on the planet. Arguably the densest.

Talk about protecting the psaltery from dings… This wood’s got it covered.

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Abralon Sanding Discs

21. January 2008 Eric

At the picture to the left you will see one of my favorite sanding items. It’s called Abralon, and I use it when I am initially buffing out a bowed psaltery’s finish.  It’s a sanding disc that is basically made out of fabric, with a 1/4″ foam backing. These things are just plain great.

Just what’s so great about this thing?

Well, for starters, it basically never gets clogged. Ever. Sure, some finish can ball up on the surface, but it can always be blown off by a blast from a air compressor hose, or just by taking it off the sander and beating it between your hands.

Secondly, and the most important for me, it allows you to dry-sand a finish all the way up to 4000 grit. (Yes, 4000 grit.) The pad shown in the picture is actually a 4000 grit pad. It is amazing to me that it is possible to sand at this fine of a grit, without a lubricant, and still get a smooth, consistent finish. It sure beats MicroMesh, at least up to 4000 grit.

Third, they do seem to last a good long while. While the initial gritty feel to the surface of the disc is quickly lost, it still seems good at cutting long after its first use.

About the only downside is that since the pad is so soft, it is not good for leveling. For that I use a regular finish sander with standard sandpaper. But once any drips, sags, or any other surface irregularities are removed, Abralon really excels.

Well, the only other downside would be its price. Not exactly cheap at all, but certainly worth it in time saved in the arduous task of finishing the finish, at least for me anyway.

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Delignit is Here

18. January 2008 Eric

So just what is Delignit? Delignit is a laminated pinblock material made of European Beech and bonded with phenolic resins. It is widely used in high-end pianos worldwide, and is actually imported from Germany.

In a nutshell, it is a specialized form of plywood that I’ve now adapted to be used in bowed psalteries to give them even more tuning stability. All psalteries from here on out will have an upper surface of Delignit where the tuning pins make contact with the pinblock. (See picture on left.)

Since there are so many layers of wood that contact the tuning pin, the pinblock’s surface is guaranteed to be consistent and free of any large defects. Also, since the wood is cross-laminated with the grain running perpendicular to the adjacent layers, it less susceptible to movement during changes in weather.

What it all amounts to is this: your bowed psaltery will be more likely to remain in tune.

A thankless job, I know.

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Tim’s “Celtic” Psaltery

16. January 2008 Eric

Here you can see a bowed psaltery that I just finished stringing. It has a bookmatched Sitka Spruce top with a Celtic knot style rose, along with a ring of burled walnut to border it. The trim and bridge is Black Walnut, and the back and sides are Curly Maple.

And I just had to include a shot of the finished rear soundhole. It is rimmed with Cocobolo. Just as a follow up, you can see what it looked like before it was finished in this post.

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Custom Turned Tuning Wrench

14. January 2008 Eric

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.

Building, Experimental | 3 Comments »

A True Heavyweight Psaltery…

9. January 2008 Eric

One of the psalteries that I’m currently working on is with a wood that is the heaviest that I’ve used to date: a tropical rosewood called Cocobolo.

It has probably one of the brightest and glassiest tap-tones of any wood I’ve come across, and it’s also one of my personal favorites in terms of beauty. See for yourself from this picture I took with a hypothetical back being set on the frame. (And just think: that is without any sort of finish - the color will get much darker and more vibrant with time.)

After some strategic boring and hollowing, etc. the frame weighed in at only 1 pound, 12.2 ounces. (That is for the frame only, excluding any soundboard or back.) And while that is heavier most other frames I’ve used in a long time, it is much lighter than many other psalteries I’ve seen available, and it should prove to be quite responsive and resonant.

And along a similar vein, I’ve compiled a chart of material densities on my sister-site “A Psimple Psaltery” for those curious to see how much all of the woods and materials used in making a bowed psaltery actually weigh. Material Density Chart

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Fun with Bookmatching

7. January 2008 Eric

As I was walking past a bowed psaltery in progress, I noticed an interesting phenomenon with the wood.

Light tends to reflect off of the wood in different ways depending on the orientation of the wood. So, two bookmatched panels, which are basically identical in color and grain pattern, can look different because they are oriented in different directions from each other.

Check it out:

In this picture, the upper right-hand side looks darker, and the top left side is light. (Along with a checker-board type effect with light/dark areas below each of the respective sides.)

But coming from a different angle, the Spruce top now reveals the opposite: the side which used to be dark is now light, and the light side is now darker.

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