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Sunday, February 09, 2014

Bang!

I finished the nut,  polished up the pegs with wax and fitted the tied frets. I then tied on the strings and started to tension them. All was well for a while (most of the strings a tone or so below their final pitch), and the tone sounded quite nice. Then there was a creaking sound, followed by a 'bang', and off came the bridge - the hide glue joint had failed!

There is no damage to the belly, so it should be a straightforward job to clean up and glue it back on, but I think I and going to go with a more forgiving adhesive. Probably Araldite (but don't tell anyone!).

Sunday, February 02, 2014

Wax on, Wax off

The finish is now , ...er, finished! The belly got three coats of my home made wax, and then I finished the whole instrument with Renaissance Micro Crystalline Wax. This leaves a very nice silky finish, and it is claimed to provide excellent protection from fingerprints etc.

I am going to use Aquila nylgut strings for all the seven courses, as shown below. There seems to be a million different ways to string up a lute, so this is just a guess as to what might work.



1
g'
0.42 Nylgut

2
d'
0.54 Nylgut

2
d'
0.54 Nylgut

3
a
0.68 Nylgut

3
a
0.68 Nylgut

4
f
0.85 Nylgut

4
f
0.85 Nylgut

5
c
1.12D Nylgut wound with copper wire 

5
c
1.12D Nylgut wound with copper wire

6
g
0.73 Nylgut

6
G
1.45D Nylgut wound with copper wire 

7
d
0.85 Nylgut

7
D
1.65D Nylgut wound with copper wire


The rest of the work will be 'setting up' the strings, nut and gut frets.