Major Progress on the Sides

My hurdy gurdy now has sides!

I have two beautiful pieces of Honduras mahogany at about 1/8th inch thick that are cut out and are in the process of being sanded to the exact shape needed.

Here are the beauties.

I also got the bottom, walnut, pieces of my gurdy sanded(using a drum sanded) also to the correct thickness! these pieces also look amazing.

I also thought I would assemble (sort of) my pieces to get more sense of what the instrument will look like.



In my opinion I think it is looking good.

(sorry for the blurry picture)

I also think I need to improve the lighting in my shop. A better way of lighting everything is next on my list of stuff to purchase.

A New Tool, and more sanding.

I got another tool!
This time it is a sleeveless sanding drum. This one specifically. It is an awesome tool. It makes sanding my pieces much much easier, and lets my drill press do much much more.

This is what it looks like installed.

  And here is the awesome that it can do:

This is the other sanded side. Both sides looked like this before sanding.

And this is what my ribs are starting to look like, and it is awesome.

Well now that this post is done I am off to go sand more.

Saw, Ribs and Sander

Lots to add, it has been a while since my last post and some awesome stuff has happened.

First of all I got a scroll saw! This is such a useful tool.

I will be able to use this for all my cutting out needs, on my side panels back piece and the ribs of my gurdy.


This is my saw:

It is a bottom of the line scroll saw, but it will do exactly what I need it to do.

This is the first piece made on it, turned out well. It is rib A.

In addition to that first rib I have cut out ribs B and C. Here are the three of them shown together. They all need more work sanding them to get them down to the correct size and so they have the correct curvatures and are smooth. They are neat now, but can only get better.

I have saved the coolest part for last. After looking at the tools I have and what I need to do I have come to the realization that need a spindle sander. The only problem is that they are expensive, or I would have to travel to another persons shop to use them. So instead of getting another tool I decided to try using my drill press. Lo and behold it works. My original test involved taping a piece of sand paper to a pencil. It worked ok, but I will probably be getting a set of sanding drums that are made exactly for this sort of thing.

This is what my drill press sanding setup looked like.

Some work shaping the back piece.

I could not sleep and was quite awake. So I put on some music, grabbed a hammer and chisel and went to town on the back of my the instrument. It now is starting to take its shape.

There is still much shaping and finishing to do, but I chipped away lots of material this morning.

Photos of the "destruction".

Reference Photos

Here are two reference photos from the book Making and Playing Musical Instruments

This is an image of the gurdy taht was build by Herman Dewit, my finished one will look similar to this.

This is an exploded view showing all the parts that go into making this instrument.

Progress

Today I made what feels like a huge jump forward in work on The Dewit. Though I realize that much of the work is still to come.

Today I went to the lumber yard again, and got African Mahogany for the back and walnut for the base and ribs.

I also got to work in the shop of Mike Smith, the luthier who is helping me out. So I was able to get my base pieces cut to approximate thickness, my back rough cut and the upper panel of the tuning pin box roughly cut out.

With this amount of progress I am able to see what (very roughly) what the instrument will look like.

Below are a few pictures of working on the wood and what the pieces look like when they are leaned against each other. The first is of my transport to and from the lumber yard.

And then there were blueprints

I just got my plans enlarged and so I now have blueprints for the gurdy!