Day 158: Drilling a Hole Where the Rain Gets In

Yeah...no, the title of this post has precious little to do with the topic yet who doesn't like the Beatles, right? I actually ended up drilling several holes, but more about that later. First, I finished up the near-final thicknessing of the soundboard. I have some feathering left to do, but it's good to go for now at or near 3 mm.

I still need to work a bit on cleaning up the reverse, as well as getting the bridges bent and completed for mounting. More on that later.

I was able this past week to finally get the holes drilled for the tuning pins. This entailed making a couple of small sort-of-guides with 5-degree angles cut into them. One was necessarily thinner to accommodate the lack of space between the eight foot pin holes and the nameboard, but I really just ended up using it for both sets and, eventually, abandoning it altogether. Before drilling the holes, I tested an idea from Owen Daly of Owen Daly Early Keyboard Instruments that involved initially running the drill bit backward to prevent tear-out on the soft spruce that caps the pinblock.

Once I was satisfied with the results, I laid out the plan, tapped in starter dimples and scored the location of the nuts with a marking tool.

The IKEA lamp I use for close-up work messes with my phone camera - I didn't really do the work with the lights off and a flashlight shining on the plan. Once it was all dimpled up, I went to town drilling the 104 holes.

I'll be gluing the eight foot and four foot nuts up soon (I'm not really sure when as a couple of other urgent projects have caught my attention as of late).

On a completely unrelated note, I recently ordered some clavicembalo music written by Ferdinando de Medici and the envelope it came in identified me as Dr. Chief Sawdust Maker Darin Molnar. Yes. Yes, I am.

And...finally...The Tortuga!

Until next time...