Project Update: Planes, Pencils, Set Screws, and Files

I received a message from the distant past last week when a friend from high school who had been watching my Facebook project page contacted me to see if I would be interested in some high quality hand tools left when her father passed away a couple of years ago. I'd heard stories about other guys running across a treasure trove of tools, so I was really quite excited by the prospect of discovering one myself.

When I arrived at her mother's home, it was clear that her father was a talented and industrious woodworker. He had produced from his small basement shop shelves, chairs, bird feeders and, I'm sure, a list of accomplishments that would humble even the most creative woodworker. It was an honor to be chosen to acquire his tools and I will honor him every time I use one.

The list of tools I picked up includes

• 2 - Stanley #4 hand planes, one with a patent year of 1910
• 1 - Stanley 220 hand plane (I already owned the black 220 in the photo below)
• 1 - Small, but very high quality hand plane
• 2 - Antique hand planes
• 1 - Antique scribe tool
• 2 - Metal rasps
• 1 - Small hand saw
• 1 - 1/2" wood chisel
• 1 - Square palm sander
• 1 - Leather apron
• 1 - Antique toolbox
• 15 - Packages of sandpaper of various grains
• 1 - Heavy duty straightedge
• 2 - 90-degree straightedges
• Assorted files of various shapes and sizes
• Assorted scrap woods, including white oak, poplar, maple, cherry, walnut, mahogany, pine, cedar, and spruce
• 1 box of smaller scrap woods of all kinds, including several dowels of different sizes

And they let me get away with all of this for only $60.00.  I will always be grateful to my friend and her mother; they will surely be invited as honored guests for the concert debut of Molnar Opus 1. 

As if this weren't enough, I then picked up 72 mechanical pencils at Costco. According to my calculations, it will be the summer of 2065 before I need another pencil (they have a tendency to disappear, but it takes a while).

Finally, I noticed a few weeks ago that a set screw was missing from the left guide block of my band saw. After ordering one and patiently waiting several weeks for it to arrive, I installed it last night in a jif. All good now.

Though I haven't made much progress on the instrument itself, it's been a great couple of weeks.

Until next time...

Day 26: Gluing Felt, Punching Keys

I finally got the back rail felt glued to the keyframe. This felt is intended to cushion the back end of the key, reducing noise when the instrument is played. I ended up using 3M Super 77 spray adhesive for the task.

In hindsight, I should have taped off the back end of the felt before spraying the adhesive - that stuff gets everywhere. This won't affect the sound or playing of the instrument, it just looks a little tacky (no pun intended).

BTW, this means the keyframe is OFFICIALLY COMPLETED! Woo Hoo!!

I also went ahead and tested the key mortise punch tool I received from Hubbard Harpsichords. Yes, I paid $16 for the "tool" because I don't have a grinder, something that I've needed a couple of times during this project. I see a Craigslist adventure in my near future...

The punch tested out fine on a piece of scrap poplar, so I'm going to go ahead and punch away tonight. I've been busy with life the last couple of weeks and have only found myself in the shop after everyone in my neighborhood has hit the sack, which has prevented me from whacking away at the keys. Best not to piss off the neighbors, if you know what I mean.

Until next time...

Day 25: Placing Pins, Installing Papers and Felts

I was able to get the new balance rail pins (yes, the ones that were 1/4" too long) cut and set last night. After long and careful consideration, I decided to try cutting each balance rail pin using my trusty bolt cutter. Why I have a bolt cutter laying around is beyond the scope of this post, yet there it is.

Once I cut 1/4" off each pin, I was able to get them placed without a hitch.

As you may (or may not) be able to see, the .005" diameter difference is noticeable to the naked eye, yet it's a non-issue for my purposes; they are placed, they will work, 'nuff said.

Once I placed the remaining pins, I installed the papers and felts.

Easy peasy. The only step left is gluing the back rail cushion felt against the back rail pins. Mr. Miller suggests that I glue only 1/2" (it's 1 1/4" wide) of the felt at the back of the keyframe. This way, the felt on which the key ends rest and are cushioned will not harden or become fixed over time. It turns out I do not have any felt glue handy in the shop, so I'm going to pick some up tonight. Once I get it glued up, the keyframe will be officially completed. Please tell my wife that I am, in fact, capable of finishing something.

Until then...

Project Update: Soundboard Pricing on a Beautiful Day

I took a much-needed break from the day job and walked down to Gilmer Wood Co. to price the wood for the instrument soundboard. This piece is very much like a guitar top - 1/8" thick and considered a "tonewood" - and you can actually rap on it when it's been sliced to determine the tone produced using an electronic tuner. The weather is beautiful today, so I snatched the opportunity to get out of the office and catch the tonewood dude out in the shop doing tonewood dude stuff.

When I reminded the tonewood dude that he asked me during a previous visit to return with specific measurements for the soundboard, he got a little annoyed because the nice spruce billets are buried high up on a rack that would require a forklift to maneuver around. Once I explained to him that I was there to 1) get out of the office for a bit and 2) simply price the wood, he settled down. Apparently, tonewood dudes can be a little touchy about actually doing their tonewood dude jobs.

Tonewood dude angst aside, it turns out I can purchase a 10' x 10" x 2" piece for $225. Because I need five 1/8" thick pieces five feet long, six inches wide, this means I can get enough soundboards out of the piece for two harpsichords because I will have them cut to 6' x 6" x 1/4" to start. Though this is a very good thing, I am left with two dilemmas. The first is how to transport a 10' x 10" x 2" piece of spruce in my Kia Rio and the second is how to get it sliced accurately. My original intent was to cut such pieces myself on my new band saw, but there is really no way I could cut a piece of that length without the blade floating around and making a general nuisance of itself.

Fortunately, Creative Woodworking NW on SE 10th and Taylor in our fair city (PDX) will slice and dice the billet any old way I want - for $60 per hour. This might sound like a lot, but it's really not that much to get smooth, accurate slices, especially for such a critical part of the instrument as the soundboard. It should take them no more than 30 minutes to do the work, costing me only $30 for the cuts. Combining this with the fact that the billet will yield four soundboards means I will be paying only $127.50 per soundboard. I don't know where you make your home, but in my neck of the woods, that ain't too shabby at all.

I'll keep you posted on how I solve the first dilemma: transporting the beast!

Until then...

Day 24: Preparing the Key Covers

I haven't been able to get much done on the instrument the past few days, though I was able to get some sanding on the key cover wood completed. It turns out my zero-clearance insert for the table saw prevented me from getting a nice, clean cut using the glue line rip blade because the insert is inset just a hair too much. When I feed the wood through, it drops down and wobbles a bit. This leaves slight blade marks that need to be sanded. So much for the glue line rip cut idea.

I first rough sanded the pieces using the electric sander with large grit sandpaper to remove the blade marks. Then, I used 220-grit sandpaper with a manual sanding block (not my favorite task). Finally, I sanded a couple down using 320-grit and they turned out really beautiful.  The photo below illustrates the pieces after hitting them with the 220. All of this sanding concerns me because I'm afraid of trimming too much off of each piece (woodworking is a fundamentally subtractive process, after all), so I'll be careful. I suspect it won't matter too much at the end of the day.

On a different note, I have a small (.005") problem with the pins I ordered from Hubbard Harpsichords; they're .005" smaller in diameter (because I measured with my digital micrometer, that's how) than the pins from The Instrument Workshop. They still fit snugly into the drilled holes, so it's probably not going to be a problem at all, I just need to be sure to account for the difference when cutting the end slots into each key. The real problem is that I ordered 1 1/2" pins when I should have ordered 1 1/4". Again, I rushed into an order without checking measurements twice. In this case, I'm going to try sawing 1/4" off a pin and setting it to see if it works. If it does, I'm golden. If not, I will be ordering another 65 pins from Hubbard Harpsichords.

Some good lessons this week. Until next time...

Day 23: Key Scoring Jig

I was able to complete the key scoring jig last night. In the photo below, you can see one 1/4" iron bar laid across the key top held snugly in the jig. When I actually do the scoring with a razor knife, I will use two bars to score each key cover twice. You'll see in a subsequent post or two why this is important for both decoration and completion of the key tops.

The parts from Hubbard Harpsichords arrived, so the next step is to complete the pinning and felting of the keyframe.  Until then...

Project Digression: How It's Made

I haven't made much progress on the instrument since this past weekend. I'll be working on pinning and gluing the felt on the keyframe tonight, yet I wanted to give you something to look at in the meantime. Here's a short piece from How Products are Made that provides a few of the details regarding harpsichord construction.

Enjoy!