Strum a merry tune! This box lute was designed for a Robin Hood event. It needed to be quick to assemble, made from super cheap materials, and it had to be sturdy enough to handle even the most ene…

How did the lute come to be associated with the troubadour / traveling minstrel image? Surely, lutes in European culture have always been delicate and expensive instruments. Today, people’s …

Hi everyone--today I start a new project on The Lute's Progress: a complete chronicle of the building of a 13 course lute, from the very first to the very last steps, in as much detail as reasonably possible. What I have in mind is a series of photos taken along the way, each with a one-or two-sentence explanation of the stage or operation depicted. I want to stay away from long descriptions of how-to-do stuff; my aim is simply to document. I have a few reasons for doing this. First, the person for whom I'm building the lute, Bob Eby, of Vernon, BC, Canada, asked if I would send him pictures of the process, and I said sure. I haven't documented my building very closely for a long time; it's not that I'm against it, but usually I'm too focussed on the task at hand, and don't think to grab the camera. With Bob's request, however, I now have a reason to make the camera part of the process. And photos are, these days, vanishingly cheap to produce and distribute, so creating a detailed chronicle won't break the bank. There's one more reason I think it might be a good idea, and that's to show people, including my clients, aspiring makers, and otherwise interested bystanders, how many small, discrete, and necessary steps are involved in making a lute. There are a lot of glorious photos of finished lutes being shared by makers all over the world (myself included), and that's great, but sometimes I think there's a danger that the actual work involved gets forgotten or effaced. I hope to bring that sense of work back to the foreground with this series, and to remind us all that the amazing shot of the finished lute is the product of almost countless hours of real, difficult, at-times boring, and yet always highly-focussed work. "The Tedium and the Triumph" could well be an alternate title to the series. A couple of things you should know before I kick off the chronicle: the lute is based on the body of the Tieffenbrucher archlute, C45 in the Vienna KHM, which I have designed as a 21 rib back, and the body will be built of Honduras Rosewood, with European Boxwood spacers. I'll address other questions of design and materials as they arise in the series. If you have any questions about specific procedures depicted, please let me know in the comments section below, and I will consider discussing them in detail in posts separate from the series. And so we begin! Preparing to attach the poplar top block blank to the mold. Laying out the shape of the top block on the poplar blank. The rough top block profile cut on the band saw. At this point the lute making elves showed up overnight, and finished carving the top block by hand. They forgot, however, to take any pictures of the process. Thanks a lot, guys! (By the way, the mold on the right is for an 8 course lute being built at the same time.) Wood for the ribs and spacers: on the right, Honduras Rosewood rib blanks cut consecutively from a single large plank; on the left, sheets of European Boxwood for spacers. Laying out and cutting out rib shapes. Stabilizing some small cracks with cyanoacrylate glue. The complete rib set, cut close to final profiles. Using a hand scraper to take the ribs to their final thickness. (I've already taken the ribs to rough thickness in a thickness sander.) Cutting boxwod strips to rough size for spacers. Sizing the spacers to their final dimension with the pull-through scraper. The centre rib's bent and fitted. Centre rib glued in place to the top block. Fixing the centre rib in place on the mold, along its length. Second rib and spacer bent, fitted, and ready for gluing. After a few ribs are glued on, the centre rib hold-downs are removed and I begin fitting and gluing ribs on both sides of the mold. More ribs, trying to get the widths even at the front edge of the top block. More ribs, trying to get the widths reasonably uniform as they pass under the capping strip (which is marked on the mold.) The outside rib is ready to glue on the bass side. All the ribs are on; the back will be scraped, and the bottom end shaped to receive the capping strip. The capping strip is built up of numerous pieces of rosewood and boxwood. The pieces are edge glued, then pressed between cauls overnight as the glue dries. The built-up capping strip is cut out with jeweller's saw, then refined with a knife and files. The capping strip, ready to be bent and fitted. The capping strip is bent, positioned accurately, and dry-clamped on the back--then the clamps are removed from one side. The clamps (and shaped cauls that go with them) are laid out in order, in preparation for gluing. When the glue is dry on the capping strip, the back can be popped off the mold. Note the hide glue remnants on the rib joints on the inside of the back. I've carefully scraped the glue from the rib joints. Another view of the back and mold, showing the capping strip. Shaping the counter cap with a low-angle block plane. Bending the counter cap with hot water and the bending iron. The bent counter cap is clamped to a shaped caul and left to dry overnight. Next morning: ready to glue paper reinforcing strips on the rib joints. Each paper strip is soaked in hot hide glue and pressed into the joint, and the excess glue is cleared away with a wet cloth. Almost half-done, and time for a little break to clean up a bit (it's a messy job.) Gluing in the counter cap after the rib tapes are done (note the five tapes across the ribs that help to prevent rib splitting.) The reverse view of the counter cap glued in. Next day, the clamps and caul are removed. The bowl is essentially finished. There, that's the first installment. Seems like a good place to end for today. Next time, working with the bowl and preparing to fit the neck. See you soon.

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Hi everyone--today I start a new project on The Lute's Progress: a complete chronicle of the building of a 13 course lute, from the very first to the very last steps, in as much detail as reasonably possible. What I have in mind is a series of photos taken along the way, each with a one-or two-sentence explanation of the stage or operation depicted. I want to stay away from long descriptions of how-to-do stuff; my aim is simply to document. I have a few reasons for doing this. First, the person for whom I'm building the lute, Bob Eby, of Vernon, BC, Canada, asked if I would send him pictures of the process, and I said sure. I haven't documented my building very closely for a long time; it's not that I'm against it, but usually I'm too focussed on the task at hand, and don't think to grab the camera. With Bob's request, however, I now have a reason to make the camera part of the process. And photos are, these days, vanishingly cheap to produce and distribute, so creating a detailed chronicle won't break the bank. There's one more reason I think it might be a good idea, and that's to show people, including my clients, aspiring makers, and otherwise interested bystanders, how many small, discrete, and necessary steps are involved in making a lute. There are a lot of glorious photos of finished lutes being shared by makers all over the world (myself included), and that's great, but sometimes I think there's a danger that the actual work involved gets forgotten or effaced. I hope to bring that sense of work back to the foreground with this series, and to remind us all that the amazing shot of the finished lute is the product of almost countless hours of real, difficult, at-times boring, and yet always highly-focussed work. "The Tedium and the Triumph" could well be an alternate title to the series. A couple of things you should know before I kick off the chronicle: the lute is based on the body of the Tieffenbrucher archlute, C45 in the Vienna KHM, which I have designed as a 21 rib back, and the body will be built of Honduras Rosewood, with European Boxwood spacers. I'll address other questions of design and materials as they arise in the series. If you have any questions about specific procedures depicted, please let me know in the comments section below, and I will consider discussing them in detail in posts separate from the series. And so we begin! Preparing to attach the poplar top block blank to the mold. Laying out the shape of the top block on the poplar blank. The rough top block profile cut on the band saw. At this point the lute making elves showed up overnight, and finished carving the top block by hand. They forgot, however, to take any pictures of the process. Thanks a lot, guys! (By the way, the mold on the right is for an 8 course lute being built at the same time.) Wood for the ribs and spacers: on the right, Honduras Rosewood rib blanks cut consecutively from a single large plank; on the left, sheets of European Boxwood for spacers. Laying out and cutting out rib shapes. Stabilizing some small cracks with cyanoacrylate glue. The complete rib set, cut close to final profiles. Using a hand scraper to take the ribs to their final thickness. (I've already taken the ribs to rough thickness in a thickness sander.) Cutting boxwod strips to rough size for spacers. Sizing the spacers to their final dimension with the pull-through scraper. The centre rib's bent and fitted. Centre rib glued in place to the top block. Fixing the centre rib in place on the mold, along its length. Second rib and spacer bent, fitted, and ready for gluing. After a few ribs are glued on, the centre rib hold-downs are removed and I begin fitting and gluing ribs on both sides of the mold. More ribs, trying to get the widths even at the front edge of the top block. More ribs, trying to get the widths reasonably uniform as they pass under the capping strip (which is marked on the mold.) The outside rib is ready to glue on the bass side. All the ribs are on; the back will be scraped, and the bottom end shaped to receive the capping strip. The capping strip is built up of numerous pieces of rosewood and boxwood. The pieces are edge glued, then pressed between cauls overnight as the glue dries. The built-up capping strip is cut out with jeweller's saw, then refined with a knife and files. The capping strip, ready to be bent and fitted. The capping strip is bent, positioned accurately, and dry-clamped on the back--then the clamps are removed from one side. The clamps (and shaped cauls that go with them) are laid out in order, in preparation for gluing. When the glue is dry on the capping strip, the back can be popped off the mold. Note the hide glue remnants on the rib joints on the inside of the back. I've carefully scraped the glue from the rib joints. Another view of the back and mold, showing the capping strip. Shaping the counter cap with a low-angle block plane. Bending the counter cap with hot water and the bending iron. The bent counter cap is clamped to a shaped caul and left to dry overnight. Next morning: ready to glue paper reinforcing strips on the rib joints. Each paper strip is soaked in hot hide glue and pressed into the joint, and the excess glue is cleared away with a wet cloth. Almost half-done, and time for a little break to clean up a bit (it's a messy job.) Gluing in the counter cap after the rib tapes are done (note the five tapes across the ribs that help to prevent rib splitting.) The reverse view of the counter cap glued in. Next day, the clamps and caul are removed. The bowl is essentially finished. There, that's the first installment. Seems like a good place to end for today. Next time, working with the bowl and preparing to fit the neck. See you soon.

Hello my friends!--and welcome back to the final episode of the series wherein I show how I go about building a 13 course lute, with a body based on the archlute by Magno Tieffenbrucher, C45 in the Vienna KHM, and a peg box and bass rider arrangement based on the lute by Sebastian Schelle, E.633 C.218 in the Cité de la Musique, Paris. As always, I have much to show you today, and I'm afraid it will be a long post. I'll try to be gentle; and I thank you, in advance, for your kind attention. Here comes the firehose. Tying the frets There are lots of good descriptions all over the internet of how to tie lute frets, but here's my version. I personally think the best description out there, which appears to be quite straightforward and give a good result, is Martin Shepherd's. (The video's here.) I haven't tried it yet, but I will soon. In Martin's version the knot comes around the neck in the opposite direction to mine. My advice: try 'em both, see which one you like best. The tools and materials of the trade: a selection of fret diameters (from 1.4mm to 0.60mm, graduated by 0.05mm), a pair of pliers, a butane lighter, fingernail clippers, and a wood-burning tool. Neck's all ready. Fret me! I don't use the pliers to pull frets tight--I only use them to crimp about an inch of the end of the fret, so that it's easier to tie the knot. (This is especially useful on larger-gauge frets, which can be quite stiff and hard to bend.) Then I burn the tip of the crimped end. And tie an overhand knot in that end. I pass that knotted end under the neck so that the knot emerges on the bass side. Then I slip the free end through the knot. I brace the fret with the left thumb, and pull the free end back toward me so that the fret tightens. I bring in the pinch-clippers to cut the end off, leaving a few millimetres... And scorch the free end with the wood-burning iron. I like using this tool for this part of the job because I prefer to keep open flames away from the instrument, especially if there are strings on it. This one hasn't been strung yet, but when it is, it will have bass courses overhanging the edge of the neck. The finished knot. Because it can make a groove and mar the neck as I pull the fret into place, I put a small slip of card under the knot. The problem is more acute in a pear neck than in one veneered with ebony, but I do it anyway, just in case. I brace the instrument carefully while pulling the fret down into place. I've made a card marked with the (provisional) fret positions and their diameters. The end of this card rests against the front of the nut. There's the fret in place. This baroque lute has 10 tied frets, and the 10th ties easily. I don't care much for having to notch the edge of the fingerboard to keep a fret in place, or to hang the fret on a button drilled into the middle rib. It's much easier and better just to pay attention to this detail in the lute's design stage, and ensure that the fret has room to stay where it's tied. The compleat set. The frets are graduated along the neck's length. The largest, nearest the nut, has a diameter of 1.10mm. Okay, moving on: let's get some strings on this fellow. Stringing up I start with the strings to the main nut. First, I lay out the position of the string grooves. When I shaped the nut (in the previous episode), I kept the treble edge square, for just this purpose: to match my card against it, and accurately mark the string locations. In each of the string marks, I make a preparatory cut with an x-acto blade. I've run this blade over a fine file, which slightly serrates the edge and turns it into a kind of small saw blade. Each little kerf makes a secure place to seat a small tapered file, which ensures that string groove will be in exactly the spot I want it to be. All of the string grooves will be filed in situ on the lute, so I string one bass string in order to hold the nut in place while I work. (I haven't yet filed a groove for this string.) My tools of the trade for this job: two fine Grobet files (#4 and #6), a selection of graded spacers, a tube of metal polish, and a length of fine cotton yarn. I begin with the first course, seating my #4 file in the saw kerf, and making a fine, evenly-shaped groove. I don't file too deep: I only want to create a groove in which I can place my first course string, wind it on the peg, and check its height. I very lightly file the leading edge of the groove--not so much that it will create a buzzing, sitar-like effect; only enough to remove any sharp edges that can abrade the string. I file the groove lightly with the finer #6 file, and then polish the groove with the cotton yarn charged with a little of the metal polish. I then wind the string, and slip my spacer piece under it, beside the first fret, to check its height. This already looks pretty close: for the first course, I want a height of around 0.45 or 0.5 above the fret. Since the fret is 1.1 mm in diameter, that means I want the bottom of the string to be about 1.55 or 1.6 above the fingerboard. As you can see in this photo, there seems to be a tiny bit of space between the bottom of the string and the spacer. I think I'll file with the #6 file a bit more, then polish with the string, then check the string height again. Using side lighting can sometimes show more easily how much clearance there is between the bottom of the string and the top of the spacer.I've found that the best way to use this system for setting string heights is to file carefully, then polish, then check string height, and then repeat this sequence as necessary until the correct height is reached. I always have a final height in mind for each course (and that height increases slightly for each course as I move across the string band from the treble to the bass side.) The best way to ensure that I don't go too far is to use a spacer that is 0.05 mm higher than the final height I want. When I slip the spacer under the string and it nudges the string ever so slightly, that's when I know I have achieved the correct string height, and I can move on to the next course. I usually wind the courses that I'm working on, and just keep them to the side of the grooves, so I can see how thick the string is and use the segment of the tapered file that best matches that diameter. I also broaden the groove (by using a wider part of the file) as the string goes around the curve on the back of the nut. What I'm doing there is actually easing the curve, making it slightly less sharp. When I'm working well--when I'm getting into the groove, so to speak--I can do a double course of strings in about 15 minutes. That means I will finish making the grooves for the first 11 courses of this lute in a little under 3 hours. Not too bad, for what might at first blush appear a bit of an overwhelming task. By the way, to wind the string onto the peg in the chanterelle tuner, I thread the string through the hole in the peg, then bring it around the back side of the hole and thread it through again. For the rest of the strings in the main peg box, I thread the string through and then loop it around and under, so that the free end of the string points away from the near peg box cheek--like so: Stringing the two lowest courses in the bass rider is pretty straightforward--I mark the positions, use the x-acto knife/saw, then file some grooves. I don't have to worry about how deep to make the grooves so that the string is a certain height... ... but I do have to make sure the grooves are deep enough, and the outer ones curled in a little, so that the strings won't slip out of their grooves when they're brought up to tension. At last--the lute is strung. Now, all I need to do is start tuning--and keep tuning, and then tune some more, for days on end, until the instrument starts to settle into an equilibrium. The strings need to stretch, and the lute needs to flex slightly to accommodate the tension that's suddenly been introduced. The belly under the bridge may rise slightly, the neck may pull forward, and the action will likely rise by a couple of tenths of a millimetre. I expect all of these things to happen, and as I tune and play I keep an eye on how all these factors work together. Throughout this process, I also get my first real idea of how this lute is going to sound--and that's a thrilling, as well as a somewhat daunting, prospect. As with every lute I make, I've not only put a lot of work into this instrument, but more, I've put every ounce of knowledge, experience, intuition and musicality. I want the lute to sound beautiful--but will it? How can I know? Will it have strength, volume, projection? Will it have subtlety and soul? Will there be an evenness of response across the string band? Will it give everything the player asks of it? Will the treble sing? Will the sound of the basses break your heart? Only time will show these things, and it won't necessarily show them to me. In my workshop, I'll only get the merest glimpse of what this lute might sound like. Very soon I'll be giving it up to the new owner, who will be the one responsible for bringing it to life and giving it its true voice. My job, at this point, is to make sure that everything works--the strings vibrate without buzzing at the nut, the pegs are well fitted and lubricated, and the feel of the lute is friendly and comfortable. At this point, lute making is a matter of details; it were ever thus, but at this point even more so. So let us put the finishing touches. Body Frets Now that the lute's finally well in tune, I can find the octave, calculate the correct placement of the frets, and nudge the tied ones into place and make and accurately glue the wooden body frets. To find the octave, I use a small piece of body fret shaped from a strip of ebony. I move it slightly up and down the string until I find the exact spot where the fretted note matches the harmonic at the mid-point of the string. (I could do that by ear, but for convenience's sake I use an electronic tuner.) While holding the fret down, I make two light marks with a sharp, soft lead on each side. Then I lift the fret away and mark the mid-point. That mark is my octave.I can then measure the distance between that mark and the front edge of the nut, and double the number to give me the playing string length of the lute. This string length will be a little shorter than the physical measurement of the string from the bridge to the nut--usually a few tenths of a millimetre--owing to the physics of a string that's been stretched in order to be pressed down onto a fret. Once I have the playing string length, I can use it to calculate the accurate position of all the frets. I mark these positions on a strip of card, lay it down on the fingerboard beside the first course, and push or pull the tied frets into their spots. The 11th and 12th frets, however, I'll need to locate and glue down accurately on the belly. Here's how that process goes. I want the ends of the body frets to basically follow the line of the treble edge of the fingerboard, so I lay down a short strip of masking tape on the belly that projects this line. I then mark the positions of the 11th and 12th frets on the edge of that piece of tape. At each of these points, I lay down my small rule and measure how long the fret should be. I want the 11th fret to cover the first four courses, so I measure from the mid-point between the fifth and fourth course, to the edge of the masking tape. As shown, the 11th fret should be about 38.5mm long. The 12th fret will cover the first three courses, and so will be 29.5mm long. The last tied fret, the 10th, has a diameter of 0.80mm. The next fret in line, the 11th, can be a little taller, since the level of the belly begins to fall away slightly from the body neck joint. I'll make the 11th fret 0.95mm tall, and the 12th fret 1.05. Here are my fret blanks--strips of ebony and hard boxwood. I usually leave it up to my clients to decide which they would prefer, and for this lute, it will be ebony. I use my pull-through scraper (the same one I used to size up spacers for the back--detailed in episode 1 of this series) to make strips of fret material exactly 1.5mm wide, and of various, accurately measured heights. I cut the fret material a little over-long, and then shape it pretty carefully with a fine file. I hold it in a ledge jig to file a smooth quarter round on one end... ...and then the other; then I flip it around to file the other edge. I cut the fret to the exact length, then dock the ends with a 45° stroke with a file. There they are: the shaped frets. I have a pretty slick routine for gluing the frets in place, which I'll show you now. Sadly it involves, first, de-tuning the lute and slacking all the strings to move them out of the way. That's all right though--it allows me to do a couple of other small jobs that are crucial to the smooth functioning of the finished lute. I'll get to them in a minute. First, as you saw above, I marked the position of each fret on a piece of masking tape. That mark shows where the treble end of the fret lies; now that I've got the frets made I can lay them down, in position, and stick another small piece of tape beside the bass end of the fret. I then mark the fret position on that tape too, and draw a line with a sharp, soft pencil, on the belly between those two marks. Then I scrape away that line, and along with it, a bit of the finish that I put on the belly in episode 18, to expose a bit of fresh wood for gluing. I don't scrape away too much--just enough that the body fret will glue securely. Hot hide glue is my choice for this job. First, a quick, light coating on the bottom... ...and I get it stuck in place quickly, and hold both ends down while the glue sets a little. Then my steel rule provides clamping pressure for a minute or two. And that's basically it. When I have both frets glued in place, I wait a few minutes, then brush a drop or two of water over them to soften the bit of glue that's squeezed out. Then I can come along with a sharpened spruce stick and clean up the excess. It leaves a very nice result, I think. Now while this glue is firming up, there are a couple of other finishing jobs to do. Fitting the strap button One of the last jobs I did before gluing in the belly (in episode 13) was to drill a pilot hole for the strap button. Now, I'll enlarge and taper that hole with a reamer (the same small reamer I used to fit pegs in episode 23.) I make strap buttons out of many different woods--pear, plum, boxwood, snakewood, holly. I usually turn a bunch every few years when I have the lathe out to make sets of pegs. The black strap buttons you see in the photo above are not ebony, but instead are boxwood, a softer material that I dye black and oil. I shape the shank of the button with a flat file, looking to match the taper of the hole. When I've filed the correct taper in the button, then fitting is simply a matter of reaming the hole to the proper size. I generally don't glue the strap button; if it ever needs replacing, it's a pain to get a glued one out. If the button's well fitted, there should be no problem with it slipping out of its place during use. A few final tasks Now is the time, while the strings are off, to give both nuts a final shape and polishing. One priority here is to round over any sharp corners on the nuts that could injure the player. This is mostly a problem on the treble edge of the main nut. Up to this point, that edge of the nut has been left square, but now it should be rounded generously on the top, front and back edges (and even the underside can be gently relieved.) At the same time, it can be a good idea to re-shape the top of the nut if the string grooves are excessively deep (they should be no deeper than half the diameter of the string, and some players prefer they be much less than that), or if there is excess material on the upper part of the back edge--where the strings should glide easily over a gentle quarter-round profile. A final touch is to give the top and back of the nut, as well as the string grooves, a final shine with a little metal polish squeezed onto a fine-grit sanding block. After the big surfaces are polished, I also give the string grooves a final touch with the cotton yarn. Then I clean up all the excess with a soft cloth. Both nuts are polished, and almost ready to receive strings again. But first... I'll take the opportunity to lube the pegs one last time with soap. This is an operation that needs to be done frequently in the first few months of the lute's life; if it isn't, the pegs can become sticky and very cranky to use. (I'll include a small piece of dry hand soap in the case for the new owner.) After a while, they become well enough lubricated that they might in fact need to have a little chalk rubbed on the contact surface to make them stick properly--and I have included a piece of chalk in the case for that purpose, as well.Now I can re-load all the strings in the peg boxes. For the main peg box, instead of starting with the first and stringing in sequence to the 11th, I wind the strings from both outsides in--that is, from the 1st course to the 6th on the treble side, and from the 11th course to the 7th on the bass side. This keeps the strings orderly and prevents them crossing in the peg box. I think that's it. I think this 13 course lute is now finally truly finished, and ready to leave the workshop. I have one more task to complete, and it really has nothing to do with work on the lute itself. It's to make some sort of record of the lute, as it sounded on the day that Bob, my client, drove to my workshop and picked up his new lute. I felt that it might be a good thing to include in this blog a sound sample of this thing that's taken up some months of my working life to build, and many more months of my life to write about. Bob picked up his lute in the spring of 2020. At that time, the city of Vancouver (and the province of British Columbia) had been in a state of lockdown for some weeks, due to the outbreak of Covid-19. I held onto the lute while both of us waited for a break in travel restrictions, so that he could make the 5 hour drive into Vancouver to pick it up. I kept the lute in tune, and resolved to play it as much as I could while I had it; but I'm not a baroque lute player, and I had a new 7 course lute of my own which I had finished alongside the 13 course (I'll tell you about in a future blog post), and that was taking up most of my playing time. So, the 13 course was languishing... a little. One day, Bob decided he had waited long enough, and that the coast was clear for him and his daughter to make the trip. They got in Bob's truck; they drove; they picked up the lute; they drove home. The operation went very smoothly, Bob had his lute, and potential Covid exposures were kept to an absolute minimum. Bob had told me that they were leaving early, and hoped to be in Vancouver, at my workshop, by 1pm. I brought the lute with me to the shop that day, and waited. Around 12:30 I sat down with my phone camera to make an audio-visual record of the sound of the lute; I turned on the phone and started recording, just goofing around, doing what I thought was a dry run. I shut the phone off, and was getting ready for the real thing, the real "take one"--when there came a knock at the door. It was Bob and his daughter. I put the lute in its case, and handed it over. I never got a chance to do the real "take one." And so, in the place of a real recording of the lute, I offer you this--three rather informal minutes or so of me making sounds with this 13 course lute. It's not a pristine recording, and I'm not much of a baroque lute player, but there it is--perhaps it will give you an idea of how this lute turned out. My series is done. Thank you for reading, commenting, listening. I wish you all a happy and healthy holiday and new year--and I hope to talk to you all again soon.

Hello friends, and welcome back, after a bit of a break. There's a bunch of stuff to do that has a bunch of small steps, so let's get right to work. Today I'll be dealing with the aftermath of the 'Great Glewing' of 2019, wherein I stuck the belly into this 13 course lute-in-progress. I'll be trimming the belly edge, installing the ebony half-binding, and inlaying fingerboard points and an ebony spade at the bottom of the belly. You'll remember that in gluing the belly I used half-strength glue, and was also careful not to slop too much of it around. This makes cleanup pretty simple: I brush a bead of water around the narrow belly overhang, wait a few minutes, and clean up with a sharpened spruce stick. Then I can trim the edge of the belly flush to the outside rib. My knife blade has a sharp edge but also a fairly full cheek, which allows me to take a fine cut without the knife 'digging in.' I wrap a piece of masking tape around the tip, to guard against accidental nips into the edge rib. I have to reverse cutting directions to follow the grain of the belly. I must say I find this one of the most satisfying and meditative jobs in all of my lute making. If I've sharpened the knife correctly, I can trim the belly edge and get really close to the rib without worry. That's true even at the bottom end of the belly, where the end grain can sometimes be tough to cut. However, with my knife I can get close enough that all I will need to do to finish off is a bit of work with a file. At the body-neck joint, the result I want is a tight corner where the edge rib and neck edge meet. (I'm not quite there yet in this photo.) At the tips of the capping strip, I leave the belly edge untrimmed for the moment. I need to do some careful work to taper the end of the capping strip, and integrate that shape into the outline of the belly. To get a good idea of what that final shape should be, I lay my belly template down and with a sharp soft pencil trace around it where the ends of the capping strip bump out. I'll use this mark as a guide as I shape the area, mainly with a series of files. Here's the contour as I begin my shaping work. At this point, the capping strip is its full thickness, and the belly overhangs the edge rib slightly. Here's my pretty-close-to-finished result. At the leading point of the capping strip I've tapered the thickness almost (but not quite) to zero, while the upper edge (closest to the camera) I've left pretty much full thickness. I've also tapered the thickness of the capping strip back from the tip, toward the bottom of the lute, for approximately 2 to 3 inches. With the outline finalized, I'm ready to inlay the ebony edge binding. I clamp the lute in the neck holder to keep it very steady. Some tools of the trade. The one in the middle is a purfling cutter I made with a piece of square steel tubing (it was one of the first lute making tools I ever made for myself.) The bottom of the tool is toward us; the fence is on the left side of the tool as we face it; the blade is a couple of millimetres distant from it (only the merest tip pokes out.) Another view... And another. I'm proud of this tool. I made it at a time when I didn't have too many resources at my disposal, and it's worked like a charm for years. Decades, now, in fact. And so I'll put it to work once more. The belly's between about 1.5 and just over 2mm at various places along its edge. I want to inlay a binding about half that thickness--say, 0.8 or 0.9--which is how deep my rebate needs to be. The purfling cutter is set ever-so-slightly deeper than this. Three or four careful passes around the perimiter brings the cut to full depth. At the body-neck joint the fence on the edge of the tool prevents it from going all the way into the corner, so the end of the cut needs to be made by hand. Next step is to cut the rebate, which I do with this handy shop-made Dremel router base. If you're interested, I wrote a blog post about how I made this base a few years ago. It's another source of pride with me. Please have a look! One shot of the router in action. I make three or four passes, lowering the cutter a bit each time, until I get to the full depth I want. I set the router to cut a bit narrower than the line I made with the purfling cutter. The router leaves a burred edge, which I can then cut away with a sharp small knife. This leaves the purfling cutter line as the smooth inner edge of the binding channel. The router won't reach into the body-neck joint, so I have to use a chisel to cut the rebate there. Before I can actually install the ebony binding, I need to inlay the ebony dart at the bottom of the belly that's part of the spade. I shape the dart with this handy drill-press drum sander. The heart-shape inlay, however, I like to shape by hand at the bench. Here's the set, ready to go. I trace around the shape with a sharp, soft pencil, then make vertical cuts with my rose chisel. The dart is inlaid about as deep as the binding will be. Chisels, knives and small files get a good fit. Then I cut the dart away from the larger piece of ebony veneer, and glue it in place. Next day, I file the piece flush. I make sure to keep the blind/ blank edge of the file down, so I don't go filing away my carefully-made binding slot! That looks fine. I test how flush the edge is by holding a small piece of my ebony binding in the slot, and seeing if it bends smoothly around the whole area. This shows the area of the body-neck joint. Two details are worth noting here. First, I've cut a little notch for the binding to fit into at its very end--this is kind of an 'overflow' area for a small bit of excess length in the binding when I glue it in. Second, I've masked off the soundboard in the area just beside the binding channel. This, I've found, helps immensely with glue cleanup the day after the binding has been installed. (As always, though, I'll need to be very careful removing that tape so that I don't tear out wood from the belly.) I can't go into too much detail here about how I make my ebony bindings, but in brief: I cut sheets of ebony veneer in the bandsaw, then thickness-sand them to a precise thickness, then cut strips from the sheets with the purfling cutter that was shown above. Then I size them up to a pretty specific dimension in my pull-through scraper. It's not rocket science, but it is a bit of work, and I try to do it in fairly large batches every few years. Here's my bending iron, showing the modifications I've made to accommodate bending spacers (for lute backs) and ebony bindings. If you'd like more detail about how I modified this bending iron, I wrote a blog post about it a couple of year back. Please have a look! Water is essential in bending these bindings. So is the very highest heat setting on the bending iron. I don't bend the whole binding exactly to shape--I count on it being flexible enough (at least where the curve is long and shallow) to conform to the shape when I glue it in place. However, I overbend slightly at the top of the shoulder, near the body-neck joint, so that I'm sure the very tip will pull into place when I glue up. I also bend fairly closely around the tightest part of the curve. Here's my setup for gluing in the binding. Here's the beginning of my gluing routine. I've squared off the end of the binding, and located the end pretty close to the centreline of the belly. Then I tape the binding in place with one piece of masking tape, a few inches away. I lift the end of the binding and brush glue under it, then tape it in place all the way along. Then I remove the original location tape, lift the binding, and continue forward brushing glue and taping. I work in segments of two or three inches, so I can always keep a fresh glue edge going forward. Must confess, I use a fair bit of masking tape to do this work. Especially around the tightest part of the curve, overlapping the tape in this way exerts a nice, even pressure to pull the binding tightly into the channel. A look at the end of the piece. Note that I've cut the binding just a bit over-long, and that extra length fits into the cut-out area. (The binding tip will be cut away when I install the fingerboard points.) Second verse, same as the first! With the exception that before I can glue in the second binding, I need to fit it very closely with the squared-off end of the one that I just glued in. Would Magno Tieffenbrucher recognize this mass of masking tape? One of the eternal, unanswerable questions I ask myself every day in the workshop. Next day, I remove the masking tape very carefully, and clear away the glue with water. Later in the day, if the belly's nice and dry--or the next day, if it's not--I'll inlay the ebony heart. The way I originally learned how to do this was to spot-glue the piece to the belly, and trace around it with a knife; but I find that a piece of double-sided tape works just as well. I cut through the tape, into the belly itself. This leaves an outline that I first deepen... ... and then cut toward, with my rose knife. I deepen the recess, and make sure it's quite flat-bottomed (using a small, flat scraper) before gluing the inlay. The finished result. Now I can scrape flush the spade and the binding, in preparation for installing the fingerboard points. (Note the masking tape on the back corner of the scraper, which prevents the scraper digging in to the belly.) Here are both points, before shaping. I've glued two book-matched pieces of ebony together, and will shape them in this form so that they are identical. I've glued a piece of paper between them so that they will be easier to separate once they're shaped. The arrow I've drawn indicates the direction in which the material planes best; this enables me to orient the piece so that I can plane it from the body toward the nut. I shape the piece first by shooting the inner edge, which will be my main reference when I lay out the location on the lute. The curved edge is shaped using the drum sander. You might notice that the tip of the 'point' is not exactly pointy--that is, I've angled the tip a little. I don't know where this shape comes from--I think I must have learned it from Grant Tomlinson, my teacher, but I don't know where he got it from, and I don't know if he uses it for all the points on all his lutes. I know I do--I think it's a bit elegant, and gives a sort of 'finish' to the piece. Also, I've seen a lot of modern and ancient lutes with pointy-points, and those pointy-points seem to have a tendency to crack the belly. I fancy that this way of shaping the point won't do that. That's the theory at least... Exhibit A: the 1612 Tieffenbrucher in Bologna (photo courtesy Grant Tomlinson.) Will my work fare any better? Ask me in about 400 years. I split the two points apart by soaking in a dish of water for a few minutes, then prying carefully with a palette knife. I then wash the paper and glue off. There's one additional step I need to do with the points before they can be fitted, and that is to bend them slightly. Since the neck surface on which they'll be fitted and eventually glued is curved, to ensure a good fit they need to be curved too. While they're wet, I simply hold them against the bending iron, and apply a little pressure with a couple of cork blocks. I'm bending them across the grain, so the points bend very easily. I locate the points by laying a straightedge on the neck and down onto the belly. (The inside edge of the point basically follows the taper of the neck.) I lay the flat edge of the point against the straightedge, and position the curved edge exactly at the body-neck joint. I trace around the curved edge with a soft, sharp pencil, then remove the point and use a sharp knife against the straightedge to cut down into the belly. You can see the result here. The long straight inside edge is already cut, and now I'll use my rose chisel to cut just inside the traced line. I can't use the rose chisel on ebony, so I must cut away most of the excess binding with a razor saw. I can then clear away the excess material, and start fitting the point. Getting a good fit on the point is not an easy thing, and it can be a bit of a time-consuming job. However, there are a couple of principles that I keep in mind that help me to do it. The first one is, the long straight cut I made against the straightedge must be made absolutely flat first (a chisel laid on its side, as well as files, are the tools for this job.) After that, the point will slide along that surface into position, and all I've got to worry about is fitting the curved edge--which is largely a matter of using some fine files, and being very patient. The second principle I keep in mind is that the very tip of the point is not fitted by cutting away material across the grain--instead, I make small cuts with a rose knife along the grain. Then as the fitting process goes along, I gently tap the point into position with a hammer, and the tip of the point compresses those fibres. I can get a very tight fit in this way. There's my fit. Time to heat up the glue! This shows the immediate aftermath of gluing. If the points are well fitted, I don't need to worry about using an elaborate clamping system--I can just put glue in the recess, tap the point into position, and tape the points down securely. And this is my result, the next day, with the excess glue removed. Now I'm ready to fit and glue the curved fingerboard, which will be the subject of my next post.

Hi everyone--I have four new lutes to present to you today. You may have already seen pics of these that I posted a month or two ago on Facebook. If that's the case, and I've dragged you here under false pretences by calling this post "Recent Work," well, I'm sorry--you're free to go. However, if you're not in too big a hurry, by all means stick around and I'll try to add a few comments, to make the visit worth your while. I started this group of four in late 2017, hoping to have them finished before the summer of 2018, which I knew was going to be a busy one. I didn't quite get them all done before summer, but instead finished them one at a time, in June, July, and August. I'll present them here in the chronological order of their completion. I always work in groups, usually two or three. I think that there are some efficiencies to be gained by doing the same or similar jobs across a number of instruments (carving roses, making necks, putting backs together, etc.) Once you've taken the time to set up your tools to do a job once, you might as well do it two or three three times and make it worth your while. At least that's the theory.... After working this way a number of times I still think it's true, but there is a limit to how many instruments a person can work on without something like boredom setting in. Four lutes might be the limit for me. Progress in the shop can seem slow at the best of times, but working on a large group means progress often seems to come in very tiny increments. You need to be okay with going into the shop each day and being greeted by a bunch of lutes that don't look like they've moved along very much in quite a while. (I keep expecting the Lute Elves to show up overnight or over the weekend and, say, finish carving the bridges I left half-done for them, but alas they never do....) Luckily, I'm a patient person--I think that's probably very high on the list of qualifications for being a lute maker. And, thankfully, I have clients who are very patient people too. The first lute of the group, finished in late June, was a new model for me: a 6 course with a string length of 54cm, in modern pitch a', for George Moss of Kansas City, MO. It's from a design by Grant Tomlinson, which he based on early-16th century Italian models. I actually built this lute using Grant's mold, which he lent to me; he also sold me the lovely set of German maple ribs for the back, which, according to his notes, he'd sawn in 1982. (I asked him if he'd care to come over to my shop and build the lute for me too, but sadly he declined.) It made a lovely little lute with a very sweet, rich, balanced sound. In my experience, lutes in a' don't generally have a problem making their treble register heard--indeed, they can be a bit overbearing. Not this one, though. I was a little surprised--and pleased--at the presence and warmth of the basses, and in general the balance of sound throughout the register. To me, it sounded not so much like an a' lute, but instead like a really good 6 course lute that just happened to be tuned in a' (if you get what I mean.) Mug shots front and back: the neck, fingerboard and peg box are pear, and the bridge and tuning pegs are plum. The back, as I said, is of German maple, and the belly is one of my finest pieces of alpine spruce. The fingerboard edging is snakewood. As usual, I supplied a number of possible rose designs to my client, and George decided to go with a pattern from a baroque lute--an 11 course, I believe--by Martinus Kaiser (I don't have the date of that lute to hand just now.) As with so many old lute rose patterns, this one works a variation of the Star of David, with twisting vines and leaves contrasting with the geometric basis. This lute was finished in time for me to hand-deliver it to George at the Lute Society of America LuteFest in Cleveland at the end of June. He liked it! I was pleased. Then after the week of lute festivities I returned to Canada to do a little repair work, which you can read about here; then met up with my darling wife Julia for a holiday trip that included stops in Montreal, eastern Ontario, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Lakes, rivers and oceans were swum in, rare liquors tasted, fine cuisines sampled, and old friends, and new friends, were met. By late July, we were back in Vancouver--and I was back in the workshop, rested, and eager to finish up the next lute. This one was another new model for me: a 'théorbe de pièces,' or 'Lesser French Theorbo,' for Bruce Burchmore of Los Angeles, CA. This project was a lot of fun, and a real challenge. There are so many interesting features to this instrument, and much of its design had to be done pretty much from scratch. I had no museum drawing to work from, and really not much expertise to go on to get me started. I didn't know the instrument, and I didn't know the repertoire. I did a lot of learning along the way, from a whole bunch of teachers and advisers, starting with the very patient Bruce Burchmore, and including Grant Tomlinson, Ray Nurse, and my old friend Nelson Amos. I think there's a tale here, and I'll tell it in my next blog post. Some data: the top string is in d (A=392), and the top two strings are re-entrant (i.e., an octave low.) The string length to the first nut is 72cm, and to the extension 114. There are 14 strings, 8 to the first peg box, and 6 to the extension. The fingerboard, belly edge binding and neck veneer are ebony; and the extension is made of two pieces of English sycamore, dyed black. The belly, as always, is one of my finest sets of European alpine spruce; and the back of the lute is 11 ribs of curly maple. The rose pattern I used is known as the 'Mouton,' since it is taken from the famous painting of the lutenist Charles Mouton by François de Troy. This version of the pattern was drawn by Ray Nurse. Perhaps the most striking feature of this type of lute is its extension, which basically consists of a plank of wood with a cutout for a carved panel at the back of the lower peg box, and a second peg box carved from a separate block of wood, attached to the far end of the plank. I've made lutes with extended necks before, but nothing quite like this. I think it's a really cool design, and aesthetically it seems totally of a piece with the refinement of the music that's played on the lute. I found this lute compulsively photographable. (If you'd like to see further evidence of the compulsion, please go to my flickr page.) Most lutes are like a little world unto themselves, and some of them, like this one, seem incredibly vast. They will not be captured by a single photo, or even a hundred. But I try! OK--next lute. We're now into mid-August: Julia and I are back from a short trip to the interior of BC, where we holidayed with my mom and sister, who had driven out from Saskatchewan. The lakes and rivers of the BC interior are beautiful, and we swam in them daily. The air, however, was thick with smoke from wildfires; a new reality, a constant companion in the summers. Back to the coast, where the air is (relatively) clear. This lute is not a new model--it is a 10 course lute based on the body of the Tieffenbrucher archlute, C45 in the Vienna KHM, which I've scaled down to 95% of the original. (The back is 17 ribs of dark, heartwood pacific yew.) I have built a number of 10 course lutes on this model, along with a few 7 and 8 course as well, and all of them have been very successful. Reducing slightly the original size of the body allows a string length of 64 cm (while retaining 9 tied frets) which is a convenient length for stringing in g', either in modern or low pitch. For this lute, my client, Mark Bagley, of Madison, MS, asked me to try to come up with a design that reduced the string length as much as possible, while still tying 9 frets easily. A little squeezing here and there--shortening the neck a little, raising the bridge position just a few millimeters (and correspondingly adjusting the location of soundboard bars and, in consequence, the position of the rose)--gave a string length of 62 cm. A very manageable length for a 10 course lute! One thing that was different about this lute was the suite of veneers that I made for the neck and peg box. Mark had asked for a special look for this lute, so I suggested a design based on the 1609 Magno Dieffopruchar lute, 144 in the Museo Bardini in Florence. Here's what the original looks like (photos by Stephen Gottlieb, courtesy of Grant Tomlinson): And here are some shots of my version. The veneers on the Dieffopruchar are made up of strips of ebony and ivory; my version is made of ebony and english boxwood. Once again, if you'd like to see more photos of this lute, head to my flickr page. I'm kicking myself a bit because I didn't take any (or not many) photos of my process of making these veneers. It is a fairly involved, and time-consuming, procedure to make them, and I would have liked to write a blog post detailing the steps.... Oh, well, I'll save it for next time: I'll be doing another set of veneers like this within the next couple of years, so I'll try to remember to take lots of pics and talk about it then. The rose on this lute is based on the 'knot of Leonardo' design, with a chip-carved border. And now, onto the last lute of the bunch. By this time we're at the end of August (the holidays are done, though we're still taking some last-minute swims in the ocean in Vancouver), and I am finishing this, a 7 course lute based on the 1592 Venere. The string length is 58.5 cm, and the back is of 13 ribs of dark heartwood yew, with sycamore spacers. I had originally begun this lute as a demonstration model for the lute making class at the 2017 LSA Workshop West, in Victoria BC; it wasn't made to order for anyone, but I decided to complete it as part of this batch, and see if someone might be interested. Someone was: a fellow who works in the video game industry here in Vancouver got in touch, and I completed it for him at the end of the month. The neck and peg box are made of some nicely figured cherry I picked up a few years ago. For an unveneered instrument like this, I might ordinarily use pear for the neck and peg box, but I was very happy with the look, feel and weight of the cherry. (It's nice to have a 'spec' instrument once in a while to try out some different woods). The lute itself sounds great, full and rich, with a nice singing treble and lovely bass sound. I really need to make myself one of these lutes one of these years. The rose is based on that of the original 1592 Venere lute. And that is all for recent work. Next post, I will talk about the process of designing and building the 'théorbe de pièces.' I'm onto new projects now: two lutes only this time. Hopefully they'll go reasonably quickly. I'll tell you about them soon!

Ivo Magherini's drawing of the 1734 Andreas Jauch My newest project is the construction of a model of the Andreas Jauch baroque lute that is in the Musikmuseet, Copenhagen. Fellow lute maker Ivo Magherini generously sent me a copy of the working drawing, photos, fact sheet and report that he made when he measured the instrument a few years ago. Before I can begin to construct the mould that I will use to assemble the bowl I need to analyze its contours and make cardboard templates. On the drawing you can see the contour of the face, the centre axis of the back of the bowl and two cross-section contours. Historical lute bowls often display a sophisticated design for enclosing space. This Jauch is no exception. The bowl is flattened in the deepest (and widest) part. As the rib lines flow toward the front of the bowl this shape changes to a point where its depth is equal to half the width. Then, at the front block, the bowl is deeper than half the width. The photo demonstrates the flattening while my diagram illustrates the transition from one region to another. Ivo Magherini photo The two larger cross-sections are from Ivo's drawing. For comparison, the broken line represents a semi-circle. I created the smaller cross-section which is near the front block. You can see the flattening of the two larger arcs while the smaller arc is noticeably deeper. Making this transition is tricky even when a lot of information is available. The problem I faced was to construct a number of cross-sections that accurately represented the contours of the bowl from the limited amount of information contained in the drawing. I need to create enough cross-sections so that there is one about every two inches. Here's how I did it. At any spot along the centre line of the lute I can determine the bowl's width and depth, plus I have the two known cross-sections from the lute drawing. The image (below) represents the method. The scribed arc on the card stock is the contour of the larger of the two cross-sections from the drawing. I want to use it to create the arc for the centre cross-section (the widest and deepest point of the bowl) while retaining the characteristic shape. I marked the width and depth for the arc on the card stock and aligned a flexible ruler to those points, allowing the ruler to mirror the smaller arc. I repeated this procedure several times for various points along the length of the bowl. Each new arc formed the basis for its neighbour. Then I arranged the templates on the drawing to see if the result looked reasonable. Once I was satisfied that I had made enough templates I transferred them to pieces of pine wood that I had previously prepared for this mould. I set the bandsaw table at a slight angle to represent to slope of each section of the bowl and cut out each member. These were glued to the longitudinal section in the appropriates locations. When all of the sections were added I filled in the front block area and the rear area of the bowl and shaped them to reasonable contours. That finished "roughing out " the mould. I still had to mark off the mould into individual ribs. I'll explain my method for this in a few days. When Magherini measured this instrument the lighting was dim and the workspace inadequate, which explains the dark photo. Visiting instrument makers find varying work conditions at museums; from well-equipped laboratories to a shared table in a storage room. I understand the Copenhagen collection has moved to a new building. Information about surviving lutes is always valuable and much appreciated. Thank you Ivo.

Hello, good morning, welcome back to the shop. This time out, I'll be trimming the braces I've just glued onto the belly, adding a few more small braces, and preparing to fit the belly into the body--one of the turning points of lute making, since we're nearing the point when the sound box is closed, and the lute finally starts to look like a lute. You might recall that I ended last week's post with an ode to randomness in placing and gluing the braces on the belly. I would like to assure you that that idea did not originate with me. Like all (or nearly all) my good ideas about lute making, it came from Grant Tomlinson, and he has told me that the observation originally came from Stephen Gottlieb, whom Grant studied with in London for a year in 1986. I worked with Grant for a year in 2009, and I remember him recalling to me, fondly, Gottlieb's advice to him: that one should put the braces on "higgledy-piggledy." Words of the masters, passed down through the ages.... Here's my higgledy-piggledy result. The very first thing I do is trim the edge of the belly on the band saw, taking it to about 5mm of my marked body outline. (It looks much more orderly already.) All of the braces are glued on taller than their final height, since the go-bars bite into the tops a little bit. Now I use my low-angle block plane to trim them carefully to height. (Note that I'm supporting the ends of the curved braces with the same cauls that I used for gluing them.) I then chamfer the top edges of the braces. For this job I use a little Veritas miniature bull-nose plane, with a scrap of wood clipped to one side as a fence. (It works very well for keeping the plane at a 45 degree angle.) There's my high-tech setup. In preparation for scalloping the ends of the braces, I mark a height of 5mm with a wooden spacer. I then scallop the ends of the all the braces with a skew chisel. I look for a graceful and fairly uniform shape on the ends of all the transverse braces. When I have a good shape on all the braces, I need to shape and glue down a few specialty pieces. I put spruce tabs in a few spots around the outline of the lute, where there are no bar ends to support the edge rib. The number and position of tabs varies with different lutes and barring patterns, but on this one I'll stick down a couple between the first and second transverse bars, and a couple on the bottom of the belly, below the j-brace. Here's what the tab looks like--just a short length of bar material with a slipper-shape carved into one end. And here it is, stuck down (with hide glue, of course.) I also shape and glue a small "chanterelle bar" directly under the position of the first course. This bar helps to support the sound of the top course on the two highest frets. Now I need to take you on a small, rather boring detour (just to remind you, again, that lute making is not all glory!) My next step is to glue some small support bars across the rose, and normally I'd just go ahead and do that by reaching for my stock of ready-made rose bars, but... sadly, my stock is depleted. Oh well--nothing to do but take a couple of hours and make a hundred or so, so I don't have to do it again for a while. I thickness some sheets of spruce brace material to 2.5mm, then shoot one edge clean. I use my shop-made purfling cutter to cut off a strip about 3mm wide. There's one--now I'll shoot the edge anew, and cut off another strip, and so on, until I have a whole bunch. I stack them side by side in my planing box, rough side up, and.... Plane them flat, and a uniform 2.5mm thick. I then chamfer the top edges with a ledge jig and my low angle block plane. That's it for the detour--now I can get back to the task at hand, which is gluing the rose bars on the rose. Having cut the bars to length and blackened the bottoms, I carve a little scallop in the tip of the bar. Why the scallop? Because that makes it easier... To scorch the tip! I brush glue on the bar, stick it down in place, and then bring in my wood burning knife. Scorching the tip has the immediate effect of crystallizing the hide glue, sticking the tip of the bar fast to the belly. When I've scorched both ends, I don't need to use any other clamp to hold this bar down--it's secure. I can move on to gluing the next. There they are, reasonably neat and orderly--and an illustration of yet another of the many miraculous properties of hide glue. I'll let the glue dry thoroughly before working any further with the belly. In the meantime, I have to do a few things to prepare the body for fitting up the belly. I remove the screw I used to attach the neck (a #8 deck screw)... Drill out the hole, and swap it for something a little beefier (a #14). I carve away the rough edges of the counter cap (which I glued in long ago.) I don't want any edges inside the body to be too abrupt or too sharp. I have the notion (maybe it's a superstition) that they might impede the efficient production of sound. Now I need to go back to the neck, and do a little more planing. I want to make sure the surface is quite flat in long section (it's been a few weeks since I worked with the neck and it may have changed shape slightly since then.) But that's not all I'm doing here. To tell you the complete story, I'm actually planing a twist in the upper surface of this neck. Specifically, I'm planing a slight downward slope across the neck, so that, at the nut end of the neck, the treble side will be somewhat lower (maybe about 1mm or so) than the bass side. (Even though it is twisted, however, the surface of the neck will continue to be flat in long section.) This has the overall effect of lowering the action--that is, the eventual height of the strings above the fingerboard--of the treble strings in relation to the bass. This operation is all carefully controlled and accounted for in the planning and building of the instrument, throughout even the earliest stages of construction. For instance, I know from the outset that I'll be planing this twist in the neck, and therefore I know that I will be reducing the neck's thickness by a certain amount (a bit less than a millimetre.) I have to account for that when I'm laying out and shaping the neck. Similarly, I know that if I plane away some material on the treble side of the neck, the neck will end up a little bit narrower--and so I have to plan for that too. Just a few of the complications that make building a 13 course lute such special and challenging project! All right--the body is pretty much ready to accept the belly. So now, I can get back to the belly, and begin fitting it up. I use templates to mark the cut-off angles for the various bar ends (I've taken these angles from the mold.) I use a razor saw (with a lot of wax on the blade) to make the cut. I make sure not to cut too far inside the line (the body outline, marked on the belly)--I want to leave myself some extra length, so that I can later trim the bar end to the exact length. A small chisel removes most of the excess material, but I don't go all the way to the belly surface (because I don't want to mar it.) Instead, I leave a bit of bar material right next to the belly. To remove it, I use my wood burning knife and a strip of cotton soaked in water. I apply a little steam... And the glue releases. I can remove the bit of bar with a sharpened stick, and the belly is left unblemished. Last step for now is to trim the belly edge to within a couple of millimetres of my outline. I'm pretty much ready to start the fine fitting process, which will be the subject of my next post.