![]() ![]() after cutting off the heads and tips and cutting them in half each nail yielded two 45 mm long zither pins at a cost of about 5 cents each, less than 10% of the cheapest price I could find on the interweb. Unfortunately I didn't have enough sufficiently large nails that I was happy with so I was forced to go to my local hardware store and spend about $6 on a 50 pack of 100 mm by 3.75 mm bullet head bright nails. Pretty much every nail I tried worked except that the galvanised nails had to have the oxidised zinc dust sanded off before they would hold. Then I used the smallest drill bit in my set (1.6 mm) to make holes I could feed the string through. It would be really easy to damage your floor doing this. I used my brickie's club hammer held steady with a clamp on a bid of scrap MDF on a rug as an improvised anvil. When doing this it is vital that you wear safety glasses and hold the pin firmly (preferably with locking pliers). I hit it with a hammer to flatten the end. To form them I used a highly technical cold forging process dating back to the earliest recording of blokes in sheds. I first experimented with a few nails I had laying around in my shed. I have seen however a few Asian long zithers (Koto Guzheng etc) that had flat ended zither pins.īecause I live far from the centers of zither fashion and manufacture (mostly because most Aussie rock and roll bands fail to make best use of the zither in their repertoire) I had a choice between making my own or getting way too many at a reasonable per pin price or paying way too much for too few and waiting weeks for them to arrive. Most commercially made zither pins have a square head and microthreads so in theory they can be screwed in though most sets of instructions say they should be driven in. On the other hand if the cost of freight or the convenience or just the sheer joy of making your own appeals to you read on. Chicken out now and buy some on the internet and wait ages for them to arrive. If you live in a part of the world where zither pins are easy to get and cheap then by all means go ahead and be a coward. There was also lots of smoothing off using sandpaper and files. The F hole was started using a step drill bit which is much safer for making larger holes on thin wood. A star of David like shape would be simple to make like that too. The small decorative holes were made triangular using a triangular needle file I just pushed it in to the hole and worked it round till the hole was triangularised to my satisfaction. I made this trimming knife by cutting off and grinding down a Kiwi brand kitchen knife I bought from my local Asian grocer for $1.75 Australian. Make sure to use a backing block to prevent blow out. The remaining scrap was easily removed using the trimming knife. I started out on the rosette by drilling with a 3mm drill bit in each corner and where the little triangles would go then I swapped to a bigger bit and drilled out the next tightest bit. I then used my trimming knife to cut out the outlines to make things clearer. I drew the shapes onto the soundboard using masking tape to provide a bit of safety/manoeuvrability. I may fix that issue later by fitting wound strings like a Guitar D string to the lowest notes or switching to Flourocarbon (which has a higher density). Unfortunately after fitting bridges and tuning pins and string anchors the actual string length dropped to more like 12 inches/30cm. I decided to proceed regardless and freehanded a piano like shape. There were a few Youtubes I looked at where people were playing small lap harps with nylon strings in G I also looked up the specifications on a set of harp plans (the Waldorf 22 and their string length discussion page ) where the strings for the lowest G using a nylon string I wanted to put on this lap harp is about 19 inches (43cm) G and the Violin's scale length (with that low G note I was after) is around 36 cm (14 inches) Somewhat ruining my plans was the fact that my longest pieces of wood I had resawn for making this thing were only 40cm long (a touch under 16 inches). There are a lot of photos of old zithers, lap harps and psalteries out there and other stringed instruments like violins, ukuleles and guitars that will give you an idea on how long strings need to be for particular pitches and what types of strings they use. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |