Before diving into a post to honor Jack Peters, I thought I'd take a moment to talk about remaking the keyboard - why and how I intend to do it.
Why do I need to remake the keyboard? Well, as you know, I have followed Ernie Miller's Harpsichord Project eBook pretty religiously - until now. As I explained in my last post, meeting and working under the tutelage of Owen Daly has fundamentally changed how I view the instrument and its construction. At first, all I wanted was to build a single instrument I could keep in my little music studio to play for myself. After meeting Owen, building became something different, something to take far more seriously, especially with regard to first principles.
In the previous post, I explained how Jack Peters observed the registers and keys were a bit wonky. This was not by design. Mr. Miller's eBook is flawless with regard to plans and spacing and building techniques, yet I managed to somehow screw up the register hole spacing to the point where it's quite noticeable and now embarrassing. Since Owen guided me to shift away from completing the Hubbard spinet kit and back to completing this little instrument, I became increasingly unhappy with the quality of my work on the keyboard, hence the decision to make a new one.
When discussing the remake with Owen (who I'm pretty sure has come to question my mental stability), he mentioned that the materials I should use are as follows: basswood for the keyblank, cherry for the sharp bodies with bone of some sort for the tops, and ebony for the natural tops. It turns out I do have some ebony, yet I also have a significant cache of African blackwood I purchased years ago from Gilmer Wood Company, which I prefer to use. I used it on the initial keyboard, which is the best part of that monster. It ain't broke, so I'm sticking with it.
What I'm not necessarily sticking with is making the keyblank out of tulip poplar. I also happen to have several hundred board feet of poplar I picked up in a weird sale downtown Portland. I've never had it twist or warp over time. In fact, it's the wood specified by Mr. Miller for the project keyboard. I once emailed Ernie to ask him why the slices are only 4" when joining the board for the blank and he replied that it was to prevent warping, cupping, or twisting by using small pieces, which made complete sense to me. The keys have been solid over the years, yet I ignore Owen's advice at my own peril. I'll be heading down to Crosscut Hardwoods in Portland to acquire the basswood necessary to start the keyboard soon.
Just a couple of days ago, Owen told me about a technique that sounded familiar: Roasting wood to caramelize its lignin, both externally and internally. Roasting is a technique that has become popular lately for woods of all kinds. Roasted maple electric guitar necks are all the rage right now because it makes the wood a beautiful dark golden brown as it cooks. This technique is also used in "Torrefied tonewoods" for acoustical guitar tops (I acknowledge Owen's aversion to the use of the term "tonewood," yet this is how it's used in the guitar lutherie world) to provide a crisper, brighter tone. Does it work? Frankly, I'm not sure, but companies that supply luthiers offer them on the regular.
Owen suggested I start with maple. Later, he admitted that he misremembered the technique and that I should have used cherry because it results in a darker final product. He says that it also smells better during roasting, which would have made my wife much happier with my cooking efforts two nights ago. Because I cooked some sample cuts at 460F in our kitchen oven, the house ended up smelling like a campfire for a couple of hours, which is not really as great as it sounds. The photos below illustrate the original state of the maple cuts, how I prepared them for roasting, and the final products.
In the first photo are some maple slices I cut at different sizes to see how they would perform under heat. The second simply demonstrates how I covered them with aluminum foil in a roasting pan and the last shows the final products - a rich, deep brown that permeates the wood. Really beautiful stuff.
This intial test, even though it was the "wrong" material, was very encouraging. I can't wait to get some cherry sharps into the little toaster oven I picked up (photo below) so I can roast in the shop or the courtyard between the house and the shop.
I found this thing on the FB Marketplace for $25. It's never been used - they list for $75 - and it goes up to 450F, which should be fine for my purposes. Whether the heat in such a small space is too intense for this operation remains to be seen. I'll be testing again tonight with this new little gadget and I'll share the results in a subsequent post.
In the meantime, I'll share an interesting resource that comes recommended from Stevie Sorlie, an FB acquaintance. It's a company, RM Exports, that offers camel bone harpsichord sharp keytop slips. Yes, camel bone. I did a little research and it seems camel bone is denser than bovine, which is perfect for this application. I not only want the cosmetic benefit of nicely bleached bone, I want it to be durable enough to outlast me, which is not a heavy lift, but still. Sure, I can purchase entire bleached camel bones and process them myself, but who has time for that? The slips will take a little processing, but that's not a big deal. I've ordered 110 and they are, as they say, in the mail.
In my next post on this topic, I'll provide details about the next roasting test using cherry in the new toaster, as well as my adventures in procuring basswood for the jointed keyblank.
Until next time...
UPDATE: Still working with the toaster oven. It may be a silly idea, but I had to try. Getting it to come up to temp and stay there seems to be a particular challenge. This may result in procuring a more robust oven and selling this one on the FB Marketplace. More to come...