Uploads from Polologia, tagged nyenyere, with geodata

Hurdy 21: wheel in position 36

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:55:10 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

The wooden skeleton sunk in the shell, screwed and glued into place; ready to be launched out the window ;-)

BTW: an unstringed wheel should keep turning 5 times when you give the crank a good spin. A new hurdy I get my hands on in my town manages... about one-fourth of a rotation. Many hurdies have a hole in the keyboard to pour oil through, but with a metal axel in a wooden frame all kinds of problems could occur - and you can't get in there easily to solve them.

My ballbearings cause my heavy Brazillian cherry wheel to spin
t h i r t y - - s i x times. Eat that, traditional craftsmen.

Hurdy 23: cutting the keyholes

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:22:29 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

I file 72 holes in the keybox’ sides through which the sticks+tangents, the hurdy’s keys will slide. It takes me a hideously boring four evenings. At least I do it listening to great hurdy music, like Swedish duo Prototyp www.myspace.com/hurdygurdyprototyp

I can run 6 strings of a string length between 60 and 65 cm. Ram's gut strings and one cello string will run that distance easily, and my instrument then gains a full octave, doubling its range. With the chanters tuned in octaves, and a playable gros bourdon, this means I have 4 octaves at my disposal. The distance between my guitar's frets is copied on the wooden keybox sides - that's where those 72 holes go for the 'keys' to run through...

Hurdy 22: fretboard distances

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:20:37 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

The layout of the keybox, using a regular guitar to copy from. Most hurdies have 32cm strings like a violin. Mine will have 65cm - it will be an alto. On people whom I’ve never met before, the hurdy magic works wonders: they seem delighted to help a Dutchman in Poland build an obscure medieval instrument.

Emailing with Staszek Nogaj, the best of only two Polish hurdy builders (the other is his teacher), I get advice and support. He sends me seventy tangents which I screw on thirty-five wooden sticks which are precisely four by eight by a hundred millimetres.

These sticks are cut by the local puppet theatre’s carpenter, another helpful genius in need of a meticulous challenge.

Hurdy 6: more visualising

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:19:48 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

Paint.net is a nice free imaging programme that enables me to make this image in about five hours.

Hurdy 15: the tools top 10

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:10:04 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

Oh dear I just love my tools. In order of descending joy (score out of ten):

10) the grinder (ah, the noise)
9) the hammer drill (ah, the power)
8) the electric screwdriver (ah, the speed)
7) the two-component glue (ah, the finality)
6) the electric saw (ah, the danger)
5) the coping bow saw (ah, the exercise)
4) the fixed-blade hand knife (ah - ouch - again -ouch)
3) the sandpaper (grmbl)
2) the flat-nose pliers (just say no!)
1) the files (run!!!)

The noisiest tools are highest on the list. My hurdy itself, however, will still be one louder. None more noise than my hurdy.

Hurdy 16: preparing for the soundboard

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:11:16 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

The two-part soundboard, here simulated with cardboard, is esthetically pleasing. I will now cut it from fresh spruce.

Hurdy 4: patching up the lute

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:15:25 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

In six months I want a playable instrument - high time to start.
I remove the soundboard, which is also damaged, and strengthen the shell from the inside with acrylic wood paste. The wood ribs were originally secured with strips of glue paper, which I sandpaper off.

Hurdy 5: impress with a drawing

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:17:31 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

The rough design I come up with has to look cool, as this will win over all sorts of craftsmen and technicians if I need advice and materials.

Hurdy 3: diagnosis

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:14:06 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

My old German lute from an online auctioneer (70 euros). These instruments come cheap as they are often unplayable; neck is broken, head is cracked, tuning wrests and strings missing. Well, I don’t need those things.

Hurdy 18: hm, second thoughts

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:02:05 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

On the frame, the wheel and crank are also fastened, as are the keyboard and the strap bolts (I want to play standing up like Hendrix). Yet it's hard to attach stuff to the frame since I need bolt, washer, nut, and glue (otherwise it'd ramble loose after one jig); and foam to fill the hollow metal, thus avoiding unwanted resonance later on.

Hurdy 12: the drawing-board gets 85%

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:06:49 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

Thinking, visualising, looking at the materials, and sketching or measuring takes up 85% of the time I spend on my hurdy these days. Actual construction makes for the remaining 15.

Hurdy 7: a global hurdy - 6 types of wood

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:00:39 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

I manage to obtain Brazilian jatoba hardwood for free from an importer, alongside other planks of the best tropical wood that lies around unused in their building. Jatoba is also known as Brazilian cherry, and dark orange in colour. For the parts that need strength, I use Malaysian merbau and Madagascan pallissander. The original lute was made from beech wood, the 19th-century drawer I'm using for the keybox is larch, and the soundboard will be spruce.

If this is suposed to be a Renaissance hurdy, it was built by someone who'd been around the block. A lot.

Hurdy 13: further body repair

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:09:03 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

Darek, a local wood restoration expert, gives me horse bone lumps from the 1920s to boil into the kind of glue that transmits vibrations, unlike synthetic glues which kill sound. It is the easiest and nicest glue I've worked with since I turned eleven.

Hurdy 8: cutting the wheel

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:03:20 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

I make the wheel: a 17mm-thick disk of 150 mm diameter.

Hurdy 2: presenting the lute

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:07:28 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

A hundred years ago, I could probably have scored a second-hand hurdy for free with a particularly large sausage, but these days a good one would set me back 2000 euros. I decide to build one – there! I’ve said it – and in the process custom-make it pretty, strong, authentic-looking; with two, octaved chanters, a low bourdon with its own keys, and a deep-grunting buzzing bridge (a.k.a. dog or chien). I'd also like the bass bourdon to have keys, so I can underpin chords, like an organ player does with his feet.

Hurdy 9: sanding the wheel

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:04:34 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

The gurdy wheel has to be perfectly circular of course. I do not want modern wheel segments here: one solid piece of wood sanded down to a circle, just like they made them in the Middle Ages.

Hurdy 11: ball-bearings & screws

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:05:31 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

A Tadjik inhabitant of Toruń, a Tartar genius with metals, makes the axel exactly according to my design (after a month of that infamous CIS-countries’ forgetful inertia). With the little screws I can regulate the wheel perfectly in the frame.

Hurdy 10: applying the axel

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:51:22 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

The wheel is perfect. I buy three quality ball bearings on which it will run. Each of them looks like two thick silver engagement rings, one inside the other. Inside the smallest inner hole, a steel axel will fit. Around the outer ring, the aluminium shaft will run, screwed to the frame. Time for the frame; an internal skeleton which should keep the tension off the fragile old luteback.

Hurdy 14: horse bone glue works!

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:52:44 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

I steep half a cup of horse cartilage in water overnight, then put the cup in a water-filled pan on the stove, making sure the thick brown goo doesn’t quite get to boil, and stir it. After ten minutes it brushes like syrup onto the lute shell, where it patches up the cracks, hardening in minutes to a thick rubbery cohesive. The house smells of 19-century laboratory.

BLUNDER 1: The first time my layer of goo glue is too thick, and as it dries, it contracts and cracks. I have to sand it all away and do the whole thing again - now removing excess glue immediately with a strip of paper.

Hurdy 20: a wooden frame then!

nobody@flickr.com (Polologia) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:54:16 -0800

Polologia posted a photo:

Two weeks later I toss the alu frame in a corner and grudgingly conform to tradition; I make a wooden one. But of the purplest, the densest Pacific mangrove wood. Oh it is beautiful; pity it will be invisible. But with the internal skeleton I can make the thing strong, while the body and soundboard will have nothing more to do than to amplify the sound transmitted by vibrations through the bridge.

Only when the hardwood frame is all finished, with the wheel centered and the ball bearings solid yet loose, will it be ‘sunk’ in the lute shell, and covered with a two-piece spruce soundboard for that hurdyman vibrate.