Day 33: Chamfering the Sharps

In my haste to complete the keyboard, I had glossed right over the section of Mr. Miller's excellent book that describes how the ends of the sharp keys should be sanded down to hide as much of that part of the key as possible. The technical term for this is "chamfer".

To accurately and reliably chamfer all of the keys, I set the wheel sanding deck of my electric belt sander to 45 degrees and went for it.

As I've said in previous posts, most woodworking like this (i.e., many pieces of the same or similar part) is 50% planning, 50% having the right tool(s) and 50% production work (yes, it's very much like Man-Bear-Pig). In this case, all of the sharp key foundations get the same chamfering treatment from me. After running through all 21, they each look like the piece in the photo below.

The chamfer is at the end nearest the player. This way, the extra wood that might have shown through on the completed instrument is stripped away - another example of how woodworking is both a subtractive and additive discipline. The end results of these efforts will look very much like the photo below.

Please note that the back end of the sharp top (the right end of the sharp top in the photo above) is aligned with a pencil line I drew before cutting apart all of the keys. If I screwed up and took off a little more chamfer than required (not possible, right?), all of the sharp tops would still align properly when I glue them up.

The final step is some light sanding of the chamfers; then, I can get back to slotting the guide rail ends of the keys.

Until then...

Postscript: For those of you who might think this is more properly called a bevel (which is what I did on the balance rail before installing the guide pins), observe: Chamfer.

Day 32: Ship-Shape Sharps

I finished cutting all of the sharps. The process gave me pause for reflection regarding my band saw blade - I think I need a new one because the cuts were a bit frayed. Heck, the blade came with the saw when I purchased it; I probably should have picked up a new one before now. Regardless, the entire cut sequence went smoothly over the course of two days, resulting in 21 sharps ready to go.

Sanding them was a quick matter. I used a sanding block with 220 grit sandpaper, some tasty indie pop music on the Bose, and a cold Miller High Life (just like high school). I had the entire batch completed within 30 minutes.

I positioned one of the sharps on one of the longer key pieces in the photo above so you could see how I will be mounting all of them at a later date. Now, it's on to notching the end of each key. These notches will work with the end rail guide pins to help the keys remain stable (i.e., no clacking allowed) as the instrument is played.

I will initially notch them on the band saw using a blade with more teeth. Saw blades like this are measured in Teeth Per Inch (TPI). The general rule is that you want at least 3 TPI, which depends entirely on the height of the wood you are cutting. Because this is such a small cut with astonishingly miniscule tolerances, I'll be using a thinner blade with more teeth. When completed, I will flange the end of each using my trusty Dremel tool. If this is not clear, you'll see what I'm talking about soon enough.

Until then...

Day 31: Cutting More Sharps

It turned out that I couldn't really cut all of the sharps on the table saw after all because the gap on the insert is too wide and the finished keys would fall against the blade or into the machine. It was just too big a pain in the rear-end, especially when I have other saws in the shop that are perfectly capable of making a 10-degree cut.

In this case, I switched to the band saw where I set the table at 10 degrees and cut with abandon. As you can see in the photo below, the insert gap is small enough that it did not cause me any problems at all.

You might have noticed an additional piece of wood clamped to the band saw fence. This is to keep the angled part of the key from sliding under the tiny, little gap between the fence and the table and reducing the width of the angle cut. I did something similar on the band saw, but it was not enough to save the keys from pretty significant harm after each cut.

You might also have noticed that I'm not using a piece of scrap to guard against tear-out here. It's been my experience that such a piece is just not necessary with a band saw. Yes, the cuts are a little rougher, but they're nothing some sanding (my favorite task) won't clean right up. I completed 14 of the little buggers tonight.

Because of the clean cut issue with the table saw, I'm going to keep the key I cut yesterday on my desk at work to remind me of what I really love doing (hint: it's not working the day job), replacing it with another I cut tomorrow.

I did trim the boards down with the planer to 7/16" from 1/2". I'm not including a photo of the planing process because, frankly, I forgot to take a picture. The next step is to complete all of the sharps, sand each and every one and begin the somewhat tedious process of gluing them to the longer pieces of the sharp keys.

On a final note, I have not yet cut the slots into the guide rail ends of the keys or sanded/filed the balance rail holes that I punched on last week. I will complete these tasks before gluing the sharps, and it will take quite a bit of time because I'll be measuring my progress in 1/1000th of an inch.

Until then...

Day 30: Cutting the Sharps

I began the process of cutting the sharps last night. The first step was to find enough poplar from which I would eventually cut the 21 keys. I settled on two pieces that, combined, would allow me to produce the 21 plus quite a few extras. The second step was to install the glue line rip blade on the table saw, set it to 10 degrees and rip both pieces of poplar down one side. This cut represents the front of each key.

I set the blade back to 90 degrees and cut both pieces to 2 3/4" in width. I then set the blade back to 10 degrees and took a precise measurement of one of the C# keys using my digital caliper. It turns out the width of each key is just a hair over 1/2". At this point, I cross-cut one of the boards and discarded that first piece because one side was at 90 degrees with the other at 10 degrees.

I then flipped the board over and cut the first sharp key. As you can see in the photo below, I used a piece of scrap wood behind the board to prevent "tear out," something that is easily prevented with such a scrap piece. This often happens when you cut or drill a piece of wood without another piece behind it.

I will cut all of the keys to 1/2" in width, which means a few of them will overhang some of the keys on each side. Mr. Miller assures me this will not be noticeable in the final instrument. The photo below is the first key I cut from one of the prepared boards.

One down, 20 to go.

Until next time...

Day 29: I Stand Redeemed

Okay, so the glue-up of the broken key apparently worked.

As we all learned in high school shop class, the hardened glue will actually be stronger than the wood surrounding it, so I believe I have effected a fix. Or redemption. Or just a fix, we'll see.

More importantly, I discovered shortly after hammering all of the balance rail pin hole slots that there was a conspicuously large gap between a couple of the balance rail pins (keys 35-38 to be exact). I had noticed this in previous photos and was anxiously waiting for someone to call me on it, but no one ever did.

It turns out I missed drilling the balance rail pin holes for keys 36 and 37. This is a huge drag because I drilled all of the holes when the keyboard was a single piece of jointed wood. This means all of the holes were perfectly aligned, I just needed to cut the keys apart.

Needless to say, it was a major pain in the rear-end to get keys 35 through 38 aligned precisely enough that I could be confident drilling the holes in this post hoc manner was going to yield good results. There was a lot of swearing and painter's tape involved, but I finally got things aligned and drilled. Not fun at all.

The good news is that all of the slots are completed and I can move on to filing and sanding the holes to clear them of any errant detritus left from the slotting process. After that, I will begin the process of cutting the sharps from poplar and getting them glued on.

Until then...

Day 28: Redemption?

I completed hammering the slots on all of the keys tonight. When I finished, I grabbed the broken key to try to figure out how I was going to measure it to cut a twin when I noticed the break was so clean that I might be able to clear away some of the detritus and glue it back up.

I won't tell if you don't.

I guess we'll see tomorrow whether it worked or not.

Until then...

Day 27: Oops

Well, it happened just like Mom said it would: Everyone's having fun until somebody pokes an eye out. I was working diligently last night to get the mortises punched into the 51 keyframe balance rail pin holes on each of the keys and it was going swimmingly...

Until...

Oops.

I'm honestly not sure what happened, it happened so quickly. One hit...two hits...oh, crap. From the looks of it, the punch simply aligned with the wood grain in an unfortunate way and the rest was, as they say, history. You can even see in the photo above where the punch twisted into the grain a bit.

Fortunately, this was one of the sharps - a piece without the quarter sawn oak arcade on the front - so, I can replicate it completely. Or so I believe. More to come on this in the days ahead.

Until then...