All the heavy cutting is finished, but a lot detail work remains. Then there's the little matter of learning to play the damned thing.

October 4. Yesterday and the day before were for sawing; today is for drilling. 182 holes, if anyone's counting.

I laid out the pieces, traced them onto a sheet of cardboard, measured everything, found it close enough to Ardie's dimensions to just use his spacings, marked the positions for the horizontal dowels, set the drill press table, took a deep breath and drilled 4, 1-1/4 holes in each pin block. Two passing critical for dowels, two casually placed as aides de clamp. (1st gear for these, please.)

Then took another deep breath, lightly tacked (that is, "glued") the templates showing placement of the hitch and tuning pins to the appropriate faces of the pin blocks and set up an assembly line with the drill press to knock them all out to a uniform diameter and depth.

The tuning pin holes will be enlarged (and deepened?) just before installing the pins. I clamped a piece of aluminum stock to the drill press table as a guide, then just slid the pin block along, running the drill into each marked hole. (Note: use 2nd "gear" for this size bit in maple; 3rd is too fast: things grab and glaze and smoke and burn.)

 

October 5. Back to sawing today. I made a measuring staff from two pieces of nesting aluminum angle stock and used it to measure the required dowel lengths. The measurements were wonderfully repeatable. Then I cut the dowels on the miter saw to the nearest 16th. Beauteous.

I lightly sanded the sides of the dowels where they insert into the pin blocks to make sure that when they are seated they are well and truly seated. And I drilled glue relief holes -- one through the right pin block per RD's suggestion but then thought, why? So the rest I drilled partway into the pin block and seperately into the ends of the dowels. The space in the several blind holes should be plenty of escape space for excess glue.

I knocked everything together using a chunk of leftover maple as a deadblow hammer. And you know, one dowel doesn't fit? It's too short. How in the hell? I measured the slack in the misfit dowel and shimmed it with a 2006 Lewis and Clark nickel (keelboat design) inside the left pin block. Perfect.

I clamped everything up. Picked a sheet of mahogany ply for a backboard. Traced the inner measurements of the frame. Measured a quarter inch outside the trace. Measured my jigsaw platen (turns out that the width of the aluminum yardstick is exactly the distance from the edge of the jigsaw platen to the near edge of its kerf -- How convenient!). Clamped an aluminum straightedge to the plywood. Taped the finished side to prevent splinters. And cut. And cut. And cut. I finished the short side of the backboard with the table saw. And you know it doesn't fit?

Tested and pushed and jigged and jagged. Wiggled, turned. That right side is just not quite right... I found a way to take a partial kerf with the table saw (shim the rip fence with paper, cardboard, tape...). Did that twice. Now it fits. But I'll probably need to shim the far left corner in the short rail dado by a whisker to insure a good grip by the long, near rail. I'm thinking a tiny nail or screw in the groove an inch or two from that corner. That slot is a whisker too wide, too. Maybe I should shim the whole length of it with a suitable, long, thin wedge? Amateurs.

 

Getting ahead of myself...

On October 4, while recovering from smoke inhalation from cutting all that maple with a dull blade, I pulled up a photograph of Venus among the Pleiades and a scale drawing of the soundboard, bridges, and bridge supports and planned placement of the sound holes.

This is way ahead of the game, but fun.

 

Preparing to drill 174 holes. Note dowel mounting hole
directly below the drill head; dado cuts for soundboard (top)
and backboard (bottom) are 2 and a whisker more kerfs
of the standard tablesaw blade.

 

Looks vaguely musical already, no?

 

Dowels in place, top and bottom rails and pin blocks
clamped. Ready to trace and cut the backboard.

 

Venus Among the Pleiades...

 

Reduced to a scheme for placing 3 sizes of
holes in the soundboard.

 

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Building: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Refinements, etc: 16 17 18 19