[HG] new member intro

[McKenna]

Greetings all,

I'm McKenna.  I've always loved the sound of droned instruments like 
bagpipes and HGs... some Irish collective unconcious thing I suppose :-) 
Alas, I have minimal musical talent, but I've played around with the 
recorder off and on over the years.

I do woodworking and medieval re-enacting as hobbies, and I've wanted to 
build an organistrum for years--every since I saw a modern repro of the St. 
James of Compostella carving.  So I finally got off the dime, and just 
finished building a symphonia a few days ago.  Basically, I read some 
on-line HG pages, looked at some medieval illustrations, and a couple of 
faded prints outs of parts of a french site for chifonies I've had hanging 
on the shop wall for years and dug in.

I started by picking a box size I thought looked pleasing, chose a nut to 
bridge length at 18 3/8 inches which looked right, calculated the tangent 
placements, and fiddled around from there.  Took me somewhere between 150 
and 180 manhours, and by doing it that way, instead of a kit or measured 
drawings, I learned a lot about the instruments.  A very fun, if 
occaisionally frustrating, project.

It turned out pretty well, if I say so myself.  It's only been strung for 
two days and I'm still futzing with the tuning--that whole cotton thing 
isn't nearly as easy as it sounds--and string pressure on the wheel.

I've also started on project II, which is inspired by some 17th cent. HGs. 
I'm drawing up a good set of plans instead of doing it in my head, and I'll 
be mocking everything up in cheap ply first.  I used poplar for the 
symphonia box and red oak for the wheel, as there was no way I was using 
expensive tonewood on an experiment, and I had red oak lying around and no 
quick access to maple.  The HG will be in quilted maple, with a walnut and 
ebony keybox.

One thing I learned yet again is that you can never have too many clamps!  I 
used, very carefully and stressfully, my bar clamps, but I going to make a 
buncha cello clamps out of carriage bots, dowel, cork, and soft plastic 
tube.  Does anyody have other recommendations for clamping the soundboard 
and back (vacuum? straps?).  I'm diiging my way through the archives looking 
for tidbits.

TTFN

McKenna