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...