Workshop today: Humidity close to 94%. That's sort of why I'm not gluing up the bass.
View from the Window ... inner suburban Sydney
What I am working on now - restoring a rustic (and rusty) indonesian harp/zither (celempung, cetar). a real home-made instrument painted in thick brown fence paint, nailed and screwed together with tin strapping for good measure.
I was asked to replace the pin block, the old pin block was either seized or the pins (rusty motorbike bike spokes) just spen in their holes.
Well, when I got the pin bock off ... well, the only way to get it off was to cut it off, and with it the 12mm plywood soundboard. So then I had to replace the soundboard.
The old soundboard was 12mm ply, with two backing pieces glued to the sides. I figured this was WAY over engineered, couldn't possibly vibrate, so I chopped out the backing pieces and braced the two sides from collapsing towards the centre with a bit of 2x1 pine.
Then I cut a lovely new cheap and cheerful soundboard from a piece of 4mm plywood and invented my own bracing design. And added a radical soundhole. Added "blocks" at top and bottom of the case, banged in the broken-off nails so I can have a glueing surface.
I'll glue the soundboard back on (radical) and screw the pin-block into the bottom block (radical) and restring the thing (using the original bicycle brake-cable strings). Using my (radical) silky-oak bridge and the original bridge wire (bent coathanger).
You can sort of see how it goes together in the first pic
It might work, there again it might collapse. Who knows? WHEEEEE!!!!
I should not have taken this job. It would have been quicker to make a completely new instrument.
[/img]