Ten or twelve years ago I bought a French harpsichord kit, Zuckermann. In fact, the parts were produced by The Paris Workshop at the time associated with European Zuckermann and then separately. The French studio, I also went to visit in 1998, produces excellent harpsichords and uses top quality materials, such as the European spruce soundboard instead of Sitka spruce as does Zuckermann. The patron of The Paris Workshop Marc Ducornet , which also produces excellent harpsichords not in kit. Assembled
case, the instrument was left to languish in the cellar, flooded twice in the last ten years. Now I dug for the finish: I have already reinforced the joints with nails or wooden dowels, and began making wooden jacks (at the time, at the suggestion of Ferdinand Granziera, Italian agent by Zuckerman, I chose the option in jacks plastic just for them then I do wood), rebuilt some parts damaged.
Despite exposure to two floods, the case has remained almost intact, has obvious signs of moisture on the long side, but only superficial, going away with two shots of plane. It has a principle of detachment of the lower joint of the tail, between the side and along the side of the tail.
E 'gone the flap, ie the front, folding, cover, then I will have to redo, and disappeared a piece of the frame above the keyboard. It was also completely redo the bridge from 8 'on the soundboard, irreparably warped by water. Since I have broken the bridge from 4 ', I had to do that too.
Above, the board of holly that I will use to make tabs jacks. We taper the sides to give the final shape of the tabs, then a scratch is shown with a fixed distance from the edge: will be drilled to the point where the tab.
The profile will have the tabs when finished.
It marks the width you want for the tab, then carves the space with a chisel of the clip you see above. Finally we realize the hole in the tongue with a punch from the tip of a rectangular shape.
tongue over, ready to be separated from the tablet. Once separated the whole process is repeated. I made tabs 220, 189 for jacks that will be in the three registers of 63 notes each.
the center, one of the plastic jacks provided by Zuckermann. On the left, a prototype made with just one tab and a drum made of walnut. On the right, the body of one of the jacks final in pear.
The back of the prototype of a ratchet. He did not come good, because the upper back (see photo) and the lower part of the front of the tongue protruding from the body of the ratchet. This means that I will again try to find a proper height axis balancing of the tongue. Left in the photo shows one of the registers (not made by me, and Zuckermann).
The underside of the bridge 8 ', drawn on a board and cut beech.
Having broken the last of my band saw blade and had not yet managed to find the parts, I sawed the bridge with the jigsaw. It takes longer, but it's almost better when you are cutting, as in our case, a sloped side.
The finishing of the bridge is the vastringa (spokeshave). In the picture you see a planer low-angle (block plane).
a go-bar deck that I built for the occasion. Used to quickly paste items that can not be achieved by normal terminals, or in cases where the use of normal terminals would lose too much time and causes the gelation of animal glue. Operation is intuitive: stuck between the slats of wood glued and the top piece to exert the necessary pressure on the workpiece. When the glue is dry take off.
