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.