My brother's master teacher and the tech person for harpsichords here at IU, David Jensen, makes his own pins with 10-penny nails. You clip off the head with a bolt cutter, stick it into an electric hand drill and sand the tip round and tapered by running the drill against a belt sander. You then heat the head-end with a brazing torch, and strike it to flatten it into the desired shape, then dip in oil to cool.
While 10-penny nails might be too large for the sympathetic strings, you should be able to use any other steel nail of the desired gauge. The string is held by friction, like harpsichords. You then can make a tuning wrench by taking a length of steel rod with a diameter greater than the flat head of the pin is wide, then slot it (kind of like a Tinkertoy rod, remember those?) with a hacksaw or cutting wheel so that the end of the pin will fit into it, then cover that slotted end with a length of steel tubing that will fit the outside of the rod exactly. It's not a functional part so superglue will be just fine to hold the sleeve in place. Then add a handle to the other end of the rod, or even bend it into an L shape, and voili voila, you have a tuning wrench. (Same one and same pins work well for medieval and folk harps too.) Jensen's webpage has his contact info on it: http://www.harpsichord-man.com/ And though they're not listed on his page, he has made single pins before, at around $5 each. He also will sell the tuning wrench for $40. The pins are also great for sinfonias, which is where I just used them. They're very stable, too. Cheers, Vlad On 1/31/07 8:46 PM, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I have seen something similar on harpsichords. You might start there. > > Scott
