Gue Gone

Shetland Gue is done. Most of the surprises were positive. I was going for the rustic look of the Charlie Bynum museum replica; I didn't waste a lot of time with finish sanding -- in fact I sanded back the stain to mimic weathering. Used linseed oil for the finish -- although I did do a light pass of "Finish restore" to give it a bit of shine. After three days of prep the ebonizing solution did actually work, but I didn't care for how it looked on my sample piece. That's an experiment for another day.

Rather than spend forty-plus bucks on a peg shaver I used the peg hole reamer on a block of white pine and stuffed sandpaper in the resultant tapered hole to make a simple shaper for my pre-made violin pegs. They fitted nice and tight, hold tuning, and move smoothly enough to allow me to get close to pitch so that's a win.

Despite my misgivings three loops of sisal twine plus wrapping proves plenty strong and stable. (Most gue builders follow modern jouhikko practice and use a tailpiece that can be fitted with violin fine tuners. But I liked the nautical look of Charlie's stick tailpiece. That's an actual twig from the local woods, there. The standard is a tail pin, though; the only ones I've seen with holes drilled through the body are a couple of Michael J. King's builds.)

And the strings proved much easier than I'd feared. As per guidance from a jouhikko builder I wet the hank of brown Mongolian horse hair and combed it out. Then I separated the appropriate number of individual hairs, tied a figure-eight in the end and dripped superglue on the knot to secure it. Cut a slot in the end of the violin peg with the bandsaw and it was a simple matter to drop in the new string and tension it up.

My hair count for 28 for the high string and 36 for the drone. I've prepped another string at a 60-count that I may swap in to see if I can tune lower and still get a good sound. But I'm not unhappy with the pitches I get now; scale length is 19" so, unsurprisingly, it seems to want to tune to around guitar.

The other experiment is shaving the bridge -- or carving a new one. I'd like to see if a thinner, more flexible bridge produces more volume. I did find out after gluing a bass brace to the sound board that bracing a sound board generally dampens the low-order modes, producing a stronger top and a brighter sound.

The bow is also a work in progress. I need to rosin it up before I can test to see if I like the traditional jouhikko technique of tensioning the bow with your forefinger. For testing I'm using my third-best bow (the one that shipped with the Cecilio).

The next string instrument I'll tackle will probably be a ukulele. Although I have all the parts to run off a quick solid-body uke (something I've been planning for a while), I'm intrigued by classical construction and wood bending and would like to try an acoustic.

Or I'll make a hand drum. Viking drums are basically unrecorded archaeologically, but frame drums have been found in almost every culture world-wide. I could get my feet wet...wood wet...with bending by doing a frame drum, and I could use a small drum in some of the pieces I'd like to record next.