Nearly Done!

The tuners arrived! Hooray!

But it meant more sanding. The headstock was way too thick, so it took another round of vigorous sanding. The good news is, the tuners work now! Plus, there was enough room for all eight of them, which means I have more options for tuning it.

At this time I’m considering tuning it in a standard octave, for ease of playing notated medieval music, instead of the older, pentatonic scale. Because there are simply NO resources for Anglo Saxon music. There are plenty of resources for later (10th century on) medieval music, mostly because that’s when the notation system developed. Before that? Nada.

Unfortunately, it appears my strings are back ordered. I strung it up last night with some old strings I had laying around (when I change out strings, I like to keep the old set around for emergency spares), and… So far, so good! Four strings doesn’t help me learn to play anything, but I am pleased with the tone of the instrument (and satisfied that it will actually work!).

It also enabled me to see that I need to reevaluate the tailpiece design. It’s very hard to knot the strings so they stay put around the rope. As soon as they get under tension, they start pulling loose, a little at a time. I’m currently looking at a method using a fat section of copper wire attached to the brass plate, which should give me enough width to do a traditional “classical” nylon string knot….

Back to the drawing board…