Yay!

Yay, now I can play in different keys without retuning my harp and I can also play pieces with accidentals! In other words; the sharping levers are installed! (two of them are still missing thou) We made the last mounting today and then I controlled each string and made some final fine adjustments, to get every tone perfect. And she looks drop dead gorgeous on top of everything.

EDIT: I found the missing levers! Lucky!

Sharping levers installation

Me and my harp have been parted since early november, so I havn't been able to play it nor install the sharping levers (the "Universal" model from Musickmakers) until now. Today however me and my father started to install them. It's not very hard but still a lot small adjustments to be done, so it takes a while. We will put the final screws in tomorrow. But two of the levers are lost! I have no idea if they didn't send me enough or if they're laying around here somewhere... but I havn't really picked them up until today :/ However I don't think I use to play the two highest strings and if I do I can always re-tune them instead, until I get the missing levers.

Sharping levers and decorations

I have now ordered sharping levers and some decorations! The very best for my Tinúviel! The playing goes well, but I don't feel ready to put up a sound or videoclip of me playing yet.

Finished!

So, this is how my harp turned out in the end. It took exactly two weeks to put her together. I'm very thankful to my father who helped me a lot, I hadn't made it without his help.

Stringing

I have read a lot of horror stories about this task; stringing! So I was very worried. However, it went better than expected. I have installed all the strings now, and so far only one have broken! That's pretty impressive. But I still have a lot of tuning to do so it ain't over yet.... I have a few spare strings so I'm not that worried.

Tuning yes... it will take some days before I can play on it, because it gets out of tune instantly before the strings have adjusted themselves. But it has a very nice and rich sound! I compared it to my rental harp (a mid-east one called "Heather") and it's so much better and more beautiful (except it was false that's it...) I can't wait 'til it starts stay in tune.

Hardware!

Finally dry! It has two layers of coating now.
Today I installed the hardware (eyelets, guiding pins and tuning pins) and mounted it. It's only the stringing left now, I can't believe it's as good as finished!

Guess what?

It isn't dry yet...

*not at all impatient*

Updates like these are boring, ne? So until something new happens I won't update this blog. So no updates means varnishing process (and 99% of that is drying time). I hope it's just a matter of one day or two.

Drying time

According to the package, the varnish should dry in about one day. However, it still wasn't dry when I checked this morning. So I just have to wait a little while longer until I can sand it for the (hopefully) last time and apply final finish.

However, the neck/pillar-part was dry enough to turn over and varnish at the other side (picture below). I think when I apply the final finish I have to varnish the whole pillar/neck at the same time, but I have to find a solution to make it stand up stable.

Bright and shining!

Test-assemblage

Yesterday night I couldn't sleep, so I ended up sleeping almost whole day instead ^^;; Thence no work on the harp.

But today I tested to assemble the harp. Looking good, ne? I will start with the varnishing later today, I just have to get a better brush!

No decorations

I have decides that I will not decorate the harp for the time being. I'm not very skilled at decorating wood and I rather have no decorations than ugly decorations!

The sanding is all finished now, and next step is to fit the neck/pillar (which I have also sanded a little) onto the sound box... and to varnish it! Then the woodwork is all done. It's far from finished thou, I have to install all the hardware and string it.

Sanding

Have been sanding again today. It's very much sanding to be done D:
It's not that bad though, the heaviest sanding is done (the one I have to use machine for) and while I polish I can listen to audiobooks! Right now I'm listening to "The Hypnotist" by Lars Kepler, it's really good! I'm a sucker for Swedish crime novels ._.

On the pictures you can see how the lists turned out, the ones covering the ugly nails. It's very bad pics, I hade to support the box with one hand to keep it from falling over.

Wrong order of priority

My dad suggested that I should sand before I put on the small lists (the ones that will cover the small nails) and even though the manual said different I listened to him!! So I went outside in the beautiful summer weather, builded a temporary workbench and started with the sanding. It was very hard! And after a while I discovered that the surface is very sensitive, so when I turned the box around and sanded on the other side it became marks from the bench and splinter on the side that faced downward.

Therefor I went back into the working room in the basement and put on the lists, I'm waiting for it to dry right now. Otherwise we will just ruin the sanding if we do it later. This time the manual was right, and not my father!

I could start sanding the pillar/neck piece but I became so tired so I need a small rest.

Some pictures (if you wonder about the mid-pic; it's my dog Lucy who became very interested in what I was doing!)

Some justification

We cut off the waste parts of the soandboard and backside and filled in some of the small cracks in the top with some glue and sawdust. I will start sanding tomorrow and if it's nice weather I will go out and sand outside in the garden!

Second time lucky

So far today we have drilled some holes (the first two photos below) and then it was time for the very critical moment - to fit in the soundboard into the slots. Due to yesterday's mistake I was very worried about this step. But it all went very smoothly, I was so happy to see it go the whole way in! We also used a better glue this time, a one that doesn't swell as much. It really starting to look like something by now.

Next step is to put om some bars to hide the ugly nails, and to cover up the slot on the backside. My dad said we could glue a small bar of oak wood onto it. Then I have a lot of sanding to do!

Uses of a harp

I didn't do so much more today, I just glued a bar to the soundboard. No picture, it's really not much to see!

Instead I include a small video clip. It's the wonderful actor and harpist Harpo Marx (the reason why I started to play the harp in the first place, for your information) from the movie "Horse Feathers" (1932). I also want to use my harp to impress my love interests! ;) His harp is bigger than mine but I hope that size doesn't matter!

Not a perfect fit

Okay, so when I woke up this morning (the second time) my dad had already removed all the clamps and blocks and said that the harp looks fine so far. I couldn't wait so I went down to the basement and continued to work on it. The next step was to slide in the backside, which wasn't as much sliding as it was pressing. I sanded the edges to make them fit better into the slots, and I tried to put it in the whole way before I put the glue on. Perfect fit. I removed it, put on some glue and.... not a perfect fit. I couldn't move it either way! So it's a small crack right in the top now (the first pic below, but I don't think you can see it since it's so thin). My father said it was because the glue made the wood swell slightly.

I'm glad it was the backside because it hasn't have to be the whole way in and it's barely visible. I will seal it with something later on. I will ask my father to help me when I will slide the frontpiece/soundboard in because I think it's very important that it fits perfect because of the string holes has to be in the right places.


I also glued and nailed the bottom of the backpiece, as you can see in the second pic. It doesn't look very pretty at the moment but there will be some small lists there later to cover it. And I will trim it also, it's way too long right now.

I will continue this afternoon, I just need to breath a little.

Theory vs. reality

Okay, the first thing I have to say is that it's so much more complicated than I expected! In theory it seemed so simple, just : do this, do that and so on, but there is so much fixing! For example, the manual doesn't say anything about getting the angles right. It doesn't say anything about clamps and extra hands needed (just for the bigger harps, but not for the small ones like the one I'm building). If my father hadn't been a professional carpenter I would never have made it. Seriously.

However, at last me and my father managed to get the framework for the soundboard right. As you can see in the photos below, we had to lock the whole thing between some blocks we screwed on to the working bench to keep the angles right while the glue dries. And we had to put a big clamp in the top and also some small pieces of plywood into the slots to be sure the backside and the soundboard will fit in later.

That's enough for today.

The beginning

Today I got my Limerick harp building kit, and decided to document my progress from the very beginning.

Right now it looks like this:

And it will turn out something like this (picture from Music Maker's product catalogue):

The first step is to clean out the workroom in the basement, but I leave that to my father since it's mostly his stuff. I will also go through the list of supplies to make sure I have everything I need.