Hair Gue

Bronchitis is finally fading. Still coughing a bit but energy is back. And only six more performances to go until the kid's show is over!

Body of the Shetland Gue is done. Stained it today, and slapped on a coat of linseed oil (or as some of the woodies call it, "BLO.") I'm trying for a bit of a rustic look for it. I was hoping that by staining it, then sanding off some of the stain and re-staining, I'd get a nice weathered look. Doesn't seem to be quite happening. Also learned of a new trick; ebonizing wood with a ferric oxide solution, which can be made by sticking steel wool in vinegar until it turns into rust then mixing that with strong tea (no, seriously). Unfortunately it takes weeks and I don't have the patience to do that this time around.

Bought some cheap violin tuning pegs. I did get a peg hole reamer, and some rosewood to mess around with hand-carving, but shaping the pegs themselves requires an additional tool that starts in the high forty bucks and is well over a hundred by the time you arrive at Stew-Mac. The pegs seem to fit nicely. I have no idea if they'll actually let me tune, though (that majority of Jouhikko/Talharpa builders use violin fine tuners in their tailpieces. Most of them use nylon strings, too -- horsehair is not exactly stable in changing humidity.)

I also wasted some time twisting sisal twine into cordage. My instinct says it still won't take the load. I know one instrument builder who got rawhide strips by cutting up a dog's chew toy (no, he didn't take it from the poor dog. He bought his own). After snapping both leather and nylon I went to steel wire on the tailpiece of my Sutton Hoo lyre. But there's a museum replica build of a Shetland Gue that has a really lovely stick-and-twine tailpiece and I wanted to try to capture that look.

Or...maybe it's sinew on that replica. And I think I have a spool of that left over from trying to fashion a tool roll for my "abo" flint knapping set.

Yeah, so this is even more an experimental instrument. I think the stresses are larger (although the actual string loading is probably less), I know the body is thinner, this is also using pegs for the first time, and has bracing on the sound board. I do at least have a few decades of experience with making things out of wood so I have some instinct for grain and splitting and how stain behaves and so on, but I've been watching a lot of videos and it is alarming how many other things builders are worrying about, from acoustics of tone wood to book-ending patterns to differential swelling in changing humidity.

I've been following several ukulele and lute builds. For as cheap and simple as a uke looks, there's a lot going on inside there. All sorts of bracing and backing and dove-tails and so on. And that's without even laminate necks and perfling and...

So the Gue may not sound good. It may even explode when I put it under tension. Which is why I'm trying not to sweat the fine polish on this one.


##


Meanwhile the novel is back in Atlantis. Atlantis is coming at me three ways. There's the student film Penny made, with her playing an Adventure Archaeologist poking around a ruin looking for clues. And there's a later conversation in which she is interesting and informed. And there is a possible later book in which she is hired (more like pressured) to find the place for real.

And finds something. Not the Atlantis either of them expect, perhaps not an Atlantis at all. So that goes into the mix, too.

So the student film needs to stand as an example of how far she has come since then, but still have some ideas that are interesting enough to explore later. And I've been toying with throwing in the Sea Peoples (because everything goes better with Sea Peoples) but they and the Bronze Age Collapse are just too far off topic for the central mystery of the novel (that is, the so-called Dorian Invasion of some 400-600 years later).

The only thing I've narrowed down is that the Minoans are a blind lead. Everyone goes to the Minoans, and everyone mentions Thera, but the Minoans weren't Atlantis and that's that.

I'm also still trying to define Penny's character, her voice, her background, her appearance. I was talking to her today, asking her how she would describe herself. She described her hair as "coarse, black." And then said, unprompted, "I hate my hair."

Um, really? That didn't even feel in character. I asked her to expand, and she said, "My friends with fine, straight hair say they'd trade anything to have my hair. I say they're full of shit." Okay...that sounded in character. Penny will snark at any excuse, and I know it is a thing for many women to be always judging themselves, holding up their own appearance to some impossible benchmark, but actually hating any part of herself...well, that just isn't her.

So, I guess that's progress. But at this point I need to see how she functions in actual story. I need to write actual scenes, not notes. Which means solving Atlantis.