I used the bits of wood on either side so as to avoid compressing the cloth with the calipers. When I was planning this course I intended not to paint the mould, as being an unnecessary step for you, and in truth it is not absolutely necessary for you. Note the simplicity of the technology, and the absence of working drawings. Of course there is the question of how to hold the neck in place during these operations. Here I am heating the bending iron to bend the ribs, obviously compromising on the use of 16th century technology(! Deeply sampled and combined with smart playing techniques, it provides you with the unique sound of a bygone era. We have a mixture of certainties, probabilities and possibilities. For instance, while a wooden square may go out of true if you dropped it on the floor, it is light in weight, and would be unlikely to accidentally mark the wood you are working on. Amman also has a picture of coopers, and I think this is of interest because a barrel is a little like the back of a lute, made of ribs, curved and beveled. This was a mistake: unfortunately the moisture in the glue caused the wood to swell and buckle, opening the cracks. The centre rib is ready for gluing, with the small nails, hammer etc. I tried using a reamer triangular in section, but this did not work very well, so I filed hexagonal and found it worked much better I tried hardening the reamer but could not get sufficient heat on my mother's gas cooker; at least it ended up harder than mild steel. For example, the well known maker of windsor chairs Jack Goodchild had his workshop at Naphill, near High Wycombe, Bedfordshire, and photographs of his workshop in the 1950s have been published in books on handcrafts. Now for the pegs. . Now I decided it was time to tidy up the end clasp. The hot iron sets the glue so the paper strips can be used to "clamp" the springy ribs together while the glue sets. Also my thicknessing method will be more accurate if I am planing and comparing as near as possible to the finished outline). I had decided on a construction method that would combine the minimum of gluing and clamping with ease of construction; I would saw the back off and saw off one side only, to allow sawing and chiseling out of the slot; then I could plane the back and side and glue them back on. A plectrum or individual finger picks may by be used to strike the strings. There are often clues to making practices in the form of scribed setting out lines and tool marks in interiors or parts of instruments usually hidden from view. If you’ve been playing about with a rib for a long time and it seems to be getting more and more difficult, give up for the day, damp the rib and leave it overnight. You can accelerate the cooling by blowing on it. This first picture many readers will have seen before, that is the picture of a lutemaker from Jost Amman"s Book of Trades, dating from the 1560s (now available in a Dover reprint) and showing a lute maker in his workshop, with some of his tools. Handsaws 1 Hatchet 1 It may come to you as no surprises I discovered here that I had been a bit over-generous with the glue and over-zealous with the hot iron, causing scorch marks; I am worried about scraping the body too much if I am to remove them. I planed the surface of neck to end block joint against a bench stop to get the it really flat prior to gluing on the soundboard. A third useful source is Marin Mersenne"s Harmonie Universelle (1636) which gives information on proportions, describes the use of "wooden nails" to hold the ribs onto a form, and the use of a soundboard-shaped piece of wood to keep the completed back in shape. Here are wrought iron (not mild steel) nails. It was made of quite thin strips of (sycamore) wood (the ribs), glued together (on a mould) in a half "ball". The late mediaeval poem "The debate of the Carpenter's tools" provides us with a comprehensive list of tools available to the late fifteenth century woodworker when the tools debate among themselves why their master brings home so little money for his wife, concluding that he spends too much in the alehouse. Tools I made at an early stage in the project include the following:. This steam will help soften the wood. Three mortise chisels Freeing off the end blocks with a thin bladed knife. The written sources then are helpful, but are few and scattered, and in any case I think one can be sure that, as today, different lutemakers and different workshops must have used different methods to achieve the same end, making it harder still to talk with confidence about "authenticity", let alone one definitively authentic type of lutemaker"s workshop. Then I glued and nailed the pegbox to the neck. Here are the three parts of the peg box ready for gluing back together. Draw the lute outline and draw an outer shape about an inch or so larger on each side of the lute outline. shows a three-legged glue pot, and gouges. A lot of work was done in the woods, an energy efficient practicethat continued until recent times and is now being revived as fuel and transport costs rise. I thought I could put some veneer, paper or card of the correct thickness below this area (enough to raise this area by the thickness that I needed to remove). The photographs above show how this system can be used to hold a piece of wood vertically; here the pegs are used as shooting board end stops—exactly as in the picture of the 15th century joiner above, with the layout of the pegs in the same pattern. You are continually cramping and uncramping the strap and it’s hard to hold the curve while it cools etc. Now cut out just these first three ribs. I sawed off a strip of wood to use as a finger board; discussed further below. When drilling the pegholes with a brace and bit I used a wedge of wood up against the edge of the pegbox to make sure the holes were horizontal. For Anault"s "rather warm iron" used to glue each rib to its neighbour I based my design of gluing iron on Thomas Mace"s description in his Musick"s Monument. The surplus width can be broken off along the line scribed by the point of the guage. Burkholtzer lute decorative head plate: * Solid ebony headplate standard Decorative ebony/holly headplate add $300. For my patrol ribs I went through the plans and figured the length of the ribs for each location. This is quite hard because the pegbox is tapered, and the holes I ended up with are not perfectly true or in line, as you can see in one of the pictures below. However, because your working drawing is a representation of the full-sized, finished lute body, you need to subtract the thickness of the ribs from your outline as you transfer it. But if it seems excessive, you will need to press hard with a small block of solid wood so as to squeeze the rib between the block and the bending iron to hold it flat as it bends, if that doesn’t sound too Irish. I am placed the belly in the airing cupboard. Salaman, R.A., A Dictionary of Woodworking Tools, c.1700–1970 (Taunton Press, 1990). The date of 1596 is of course just the right date for my planned workshop (though I changed my plans later, as explained below), and I have based one of my planes on the Novaya Zemlya discovery. This is in fact the only surviving picture of a lutemaker"s workshop as such. Available in octave (g', d'd', aa, ff, cc, gG, dD) or unison (g', d'd', aa, ff, cc, GG, DD) tuning, the lute comes with a spare top string set. Another big difference is in the techniques for holding wood. For all of the other ribs only one nail in each end block was needed. Until the 18th century woodworkers did not generally use vices for holding wood, instead using bench stops (when a piece of wood is being planed the forward movement of the plane simply holds the wood in place against the bench stop) or a bench dog, or the holdfast, noted above. A toothed iron in the plane is needed to avoid tearing up the grain of the more figured wood. A hole has to be drilled in the neck first, and I have read that there was a practice of heating the nail before driving it in. Finally Diderot"s Encyclopedie (1765) has good illustrations of lutherie, but this is rather a late source for our purposes. I took a spare scrap of rib wood to make a template for the peg holes to be made in the sides of the pegbox, spacing the nine holes evenly along a scribed line. If the end of the blade is shaped like a blunt wedge, there is a danger that the physical width of the blade will cause the thin, short-grained parts of the rose to break as you try to cut them. Now it was time to start thinking about assembling soundboard, body and neck. ), I chiselled neat angled ends to the end clasps, and then made a small template from a piece of scrap rib; this was scribed around a few times to create a deeply cut line to guide the chisel. I think also that paintings of carpenters and carpentry tools must be accurate, because painters must have worked closely with woodworkers, for painters did not only paint fine art paintings on canvas or panels in the renaissance. They did not have the technology 400 years ago to roll wide flat strips of steel needed for the blade of a modern handsaw, so in the frame saw, they used a narrow blade, held in tension, to keep it stiff. Sand instrument clean. Here I am gluing on the bridge; I neglected on this occasion to use my straight edge to hold it in position, and it is now glued on very firmly, but slightly out of true. The effect of this is to reflect more heat back into the wood from the outer side and so reduce the temperature gradient within the thickness of the rib. I have mentioned that woodworkers seem not to have used screw vices so I have based my bench top on this illustration from the Nuremburg Hausbuch, showing a joiner working at bench with a three-peg system and other pegs to use as stops to hold wood for planing. Now I planed the raised area flat. Unique sound palette for score or experimental music . This is actually not such a difficult matter as it often seems to those outside the magic circle! I do have a grindstone, but I find a long flat piece of sandstone is useful for rough sharpening of tools and is in keeping with my 'simple as possible' approach. Woodworkers today tend to have a large number of very specialised tools in their workshops; I suspect that lute makers in those days would have had fewer tools than modern makers; and that skilled workers could use, say, an axe to get very precise results. Perhaps I could have pulled it back into shape, but it is easy to panic when using the hot glue, paper and iron method of jointing! So after you have finished the outer surface of your ribs, lay them all out in very careful alignment with each other, and then draw a pencil line straight across all of them. I was also a bit over-zealous with the rather-too-warm iron and scorched my ribs in many places as I "set" the glued paper strips. But when the lute is varnished up, all will once again become painfully obvious, even to your admiring relatives! Check your curve against the mould and adjust as necessary. While some of these tools—chisels, hammers, mallets—were surely used then exactly as they are now, others were not, and require practical experiments to help to recreate lost methods. That this is so is shown by the many examples of metalworking of an unbelievably high standard preserved in museums. . Planing the end blocks against bench pegs so that they will have a good 90 degree angle with the mould base board. Here I am gluing the first bar, once again using my wooden clamps to hold them when the glue dried. Other interesting pictures are in Agricola"s De Re Metallica (1556) showing the use of dividers in dividing angles and workmen following templates; and this drawing of a workbench, from Nuremberg in 1505 including a representation of an early vice, not generally in use for woodwork until much later. One brace and five bits for the same The manuscript gives some useful information, including the use of a mould, the use of a hot iron, and the use of glue and paper strips to reinforce the back of the lute. The expedition got caught in the ice in 1596, and the explorers were forced to build a shelter and spend a winter in Novaya Zemlya. The body seems satisfactory apart from a couple of gaps between the end blocks and the last ribs, possibly due to imperfect end-block shaping or excessive forcing of the ribs into place. We can see two planes, two chisels, a mallet, a gluepot, a bench and a rather nice ax and block. I had stored it there for a couple of days before gluing the bars it has low humidity. Then the peg blanks, held at times in a specially made jig, were finished with chisel, scraper, and knife. The two pieces of worn cotton cloth, torn to size, are carefully placed, avoiding wrinkles, under the soundboard in the rose area. The Lute in Europe. Basic model features: Back: Cherry ribs; Neck: Cherry wood; Head: Cherry wood; Choice of ebony, boxwood or rosewood pegs Here I have refined the joint to an almost finished fit. Take great care to get the curves exactly right. Planing the "bulkhead" wood to the correct thickness to fit in the channels in the base (to gauged lines). Besides the works cited in the text above, the following are of interest: Edlin, H., Woodland Crafts in Britain (Newton Abbott: David and Charles, 1949), Goodman, W.L., British Planemakers since 1700 (Needham Market: Roy Arnold, 3rd edition, 1993), Harwood, I, "A fifteenth-century lute design", The Lute Society Journal ii (1960) pp. I then made 1/8" and 1/4" wooden shims that screwed to the end of the noses and center rib forms. Here I marking out the peg box on piece of sycamore previously split from a small log and then planed ready for use. When you are happy with the test pieces, start with the centre rib. More prosaic, and more immediately useful for this project is an inventory of tools left by an Essex joiner, Cornelius Eversen, at his death in 1592, reprinted in Newsletter of the Tool and Trades History Society 47, pp. 6, pp. I had tried cutting V-grooves on the surface of my practice roses and decided to save this difficult process for a future occasion. Template number two is the next rib round towards the bass side of the lute. Where we are not absolutely sure what the lutemakers of old did, all we can establish with certainty is that such and such a method, using the technologies and materials that we know they possessed, could have been used, or may have been used, to produce the historical instruments that we see. Arnaut"s design shows only three bars. Whatever system of lining up you use, I would strongly urge you to plan it now and to mark the result with a straight line across the middle, a pencil line is so much easier to see and line up while building, than a grain figure, however striking. Now it was time to prepare to fasten the neck to the neck block. For some reason at first I used short glued strips of paper crossways as described by Thomas Mace. (This is a feature of many original lutes; see David van Edwards"s paper in The Lute, 1985 part 1, and more recently, Chris Coakley, "Tapered lute strings, angled necks and bridges" in FoMRHI Quarterly 109, August 2008, pp. Take the first two rib templates and lay them out on your three planed rib slices in the position you planned. A large slice of yew log acquired 15 years ago managed to yield just enough useable (but not blemish-free) wood for the ribs. A real process of trial and error. This axe was purchased on "eBay" and is from Transylvania. Take the first two rib templates and lay them out on your three planed rib slices in the position you planned. It only remained to think about the finish, fret it and string it. If your wood has any kind of figure at all, even a little feature that appears in some of the rib slices, it will look much better if these all line up across the back of the lute. I was proposing to saw the back off the peg box using my large-frame ripsaw. I had already completed a course in modern fretted instrument making at the London Guildhall University, and applied to do a part-time postgraduate course, with the aim (initially) of reconstructing a stringed-instrument maker"s workshop of around 1590, when Dowland was playing and composing. I think the inside view of the bowl with the paper glued in-between ribs is one of my favorite aspects of lute building. Here I am using compasses to mark the ends on the tapered neck, perpendicular to a previously marked centre line. Wierix/Mary Rose jack plane and trying plane I based the lengths, iron/blade widths and blade angles on the planes found on the Mary Rose. This is in fact the only surviving picture of a lutemaker"s workshop as such. In commemoration of the hard work of Andrew and the website team, this galliard was written by James Jackson for renaissance lute. A range of sizes allows most clamping jobs to be done. Again this demonstrates the multi-usefulness of the pegs to hold work against. Template: Rib Cage T-shirt (Front) from“The Martha Stewart Show” | www.marthastewart.com/rib-cage-t-shirt Lutes always have an odd number of ribs and are always built outwards from the central rib, so now draw round the rib templates for the three central ribs. It’s part of the attraction of the wood. Using this method, consistency somewhat depends on the accuracy and consistency of the mould. Frequent testing for flatness of the surface with a straight edge can help here. A rosewood fingerboard meets the Swiss pine sounboard with the inlay of two 'ears'. Before launching in on my blow-by-blow description of my lute building project, perhaps I should reiterate a philosophical point, common to all experimental archaeology. It is easy with a good master to spin off accurate router templates. I am not using a vice, but simply planing up against a bench stop. Tools shown in a 16th century intarsia guild chest, Illustration of joiner's tools from Joseph Moxon Mechanics Exercises (1683). Lutes always have an odd number of ribs and are always built outwards from the central rib, so now draw round the rib templates for the three central ribs. This source includes a small curved item on the bench, a "holdfast" (Top right of the above image) which, fitting into a hole in the bench, was used to hold a piece of wood in place, the British-style coffin-shaped smoothing plane, and the Continental-style planes with shepherd"s-crook handles (this print seems to have copied from a French source). Of south German origin, from c.1480 it is the earliest known surviving stringed keyboard instrument. Burkholtzer lute back rib number choice: * Eleven rib back with spacers standard Twenty one rib back with spacers add $500. One more thing I have found is that making you own tools teaches self-reliance. .). I think it is perfectly reasonable to assume that lutemakers would have used the general woodworking tools of their day—as of course lutemakers do today —so we can look to paintings of general carpentry for information. Perhaps all wood and metalworking students should be required to make some of their own tools! (At this point in my talk, I was gratified to be informed by Stephen Gottleib that he had been using this same method for the last thirty or so years and it had served him well—thus demonstrating that if a method is simple and it works then other people will have thought of it, and it is very likely to have been used in the past.). Mark the joints on each angle of the cross-sections and carry these marks a little way down onto the sides of the cross-sections. Here I am applying glue to long paper strips, then using the gluing iron. However, as the final thickness is nearly achieved, if a relatively long plane is used and its blade is set to take very fine shavings it will in theory only allow the middle to be made one shavings thickness thinner than the edges. Some of the Viking tools have been shown to be steel-tipped, for instance iron plane blades with steel edges forged on; plane blades were still being made like this in the 19th century, which helps to justify my use of Victorian blades for my reconstructed tools. It is interesting to note that Arnaut"s design for a clavichord, likewise, derives all its dimensions from a single initial measurement, and proportions based on it. Adze 1 Here's a sample: I really like the pattern and contrast it creates. A rib template could have been used here, along with a scriber to mark the outline on the rib. I find it best to mark the centre rib more or less exactly as the template but for all the other ribs, I mark the edge that goes next to the previous rib as shown by the template but then on the outer edge I allow about 5 or 6mm extra width at each end to allow for the changes in angle at the ends which makes fitting tricky. Copy of Dutch smoothing plane based on the 1596 Barents" expedition find. There are many varnish recipes surviving from the Middle Ages. Also this will give a very powerful swirling diagonal look to the instrument, a bit like a barber's pole; this can be vividly striking but it's not to everyone's taste. David van Edwards has recently discussed this plan, including an explanation of why the shape seems slightly different from those we actually see in late-mediaeval pictures of lutes, in Lute News 69. Two spare planing irons, If a joiner had these tools, then a lutemaker could certainly have had them. I think there are several reasons. A slightly less well-known disaster than the loss of the Mary Rose is the failure of William Barents" expedition to find the North East Passage to the Indies, by trying to sail round the north coast of Russia. A most important feature of the knife is how thin its blade can be made (like a modern disposable scalpel). Wood bends because the cellulose softens in heat and hardens again when it cools. When planing a definite area the shape of the cloth emerged. When the wax has dried, screw the neckblock back into position and return to your rib slices. I have made an attachment for my bench (screwed in place and held in the relatively modern vice) as an experimental bench top. A few tools survive from my chosen period and indeed from much earlier; some Roman planes survive, as do Viking ones, and they seem remarkably familiar to the modern carpenter in their design. This gives an insight into the attitude to measurement in an age when every artefact was custom made: parts would be made to fit each other, not made to precise, predetermined sizes as is essential for modern batch or mass production. Amman"s picture of a bookbinder shows the use of a draw knife; also the bookbinders frame, just the same as hand-bookbinders use today, and a tool called the bookbinder"s plough used to trim off the edge of the paper. Old chisels tend to be thinner than modern ones, perhaps because steel was so expensive, but this makes them easier to sharpen, as there is less metal to take away. Three mallets I used a piece of scrap wood of the correct thickness (I cheated a bit here: I had measured the wood, it was 1.3 mm in thickness) and I held it against the ribs to feel when the correct thickness was achieved. Title page from Hieromymus Wierix "The Childhood of Jesus" (c. 1600). neck & pegbox) are from Philip Macleod-Coupe’s drawings published by the Lute Society. We've built a big block of wood, carved it down into a shape, drawn rib lines and carved rib facets--all we have to do now is refine these lines and surfaces until we're satisfied. Oxford University Press. The belly was then scraped to even out the gradations in thickness this was checked by repeated "candling". I then cut my rib router template 1/4" short. Planes without handles, clearly shown in pictures, while a little harder to hold than those with handles, are easier to lay upside down on the bench when planing lute ribs (moving the wood over the plane rather than the plane over the wood). Three files As you can see from this diagram, if the figure is slanting at all, it would be very difficult to line it up properly by matching the figure on one side of a rib to the figure on the other side of the next rib. I followed all of Arnault"s instructions the best I could and added things of my own where necessary ( if not mentioned in Arnault's manuscript) and using materials and technology readily available and appropriate to the time period. Lightly scribing a line on the soundboard to mark the position of the bridge. Sawing down into the peg box slot to allow easy chiselling out of unwanted wood. This was a matter of economics; transport was expensive and it made no sense to transport a lot of wood that would end up as waste over long distances. They could not carry very much in this boat, and so had to abandon many of their tools. Start at the point of maximum bend. I did not want to use a scalpel for cutting the rose, but an old (sharpenable) knife instead. I took the bridge design from a Gerle lute, discussed in Robert Lundberg"s book on lute construction. I cut off the belly extension over the neck in the proportions of the golden section for no other reason than it seemed to me to be in the spirit of things and looked right, the surplus wood coming off easily as I had avoided apllying glue to this area. Then I rough planed the neck after splitting and trimming with an axe. (2) plate that represents a steel structure (2) Plate is mainly used as a connection piece or as a floor plate. I am coming to this from the point of view of a collector of and enthusiast for historic woodworking tools, and would welcome comment and criticism. Hi again. Bend the bottom end first where the bend is steepest. Some people recommend a bending strap of thin metal which you cramp to both ends to support the outer face by preventing it having to undergo tension stresses. In-depth sampled lute with 8 courses. Waxing the mould to avoid the ribs sticking to it when gluing the ribs together. I would also put an arrow pointing to the neck end on each rib to show which way up it goes, it is very easy to make a mistake and start bending at the wrong end. Three small Flemish chisels 12-15. In general be generous, it only means a bit more planing of the edges, whereas too mean is disastrous. Copy of Dutch "Schaaf-Type" plane of 1618, illustrated in W. L. Goodman, The History of Woodworking Tools (London, 1964), p. 81, fig. Here is am using a knife to roughly trim the end clasp to a line previously scribed upon it by "pegging" it on the end of the lute body (with pegs that you can see in one of the pictures below) and drawing around it. Lastly, wax the whole outer surface of the mould so as to ensure that you can get the back off the mould when it’s finished! Once the hole is established in the neck, it can be continued without the body as a guide, frequently using the body to check the hole has not wandered. These are a little too early for the purposes of my project, so I used the Wierix engravings to arrive at other details such as the handles, and the body shape was based on pictures of Dutch planes of the 17th century. I should perhaps have smoothed end of the body down first. As it was one of his favourite devices. I believe that the craftsmen of old used wood economically, and I try to follow this spirit, seeing if I can get enough wood for two bridges out of this block. There is no surviving medieval lute, but there exists a scale drawing by Arnout van Zwolle from around 1450.. Now it was time to prepare to start cutting the rose. I lined up the joint and tapped the nail nearly "home" and all seemed well. I tried using a small hot iron to set the glue on the first couple of rose bars and it didn"t work too well; I burnt my fingers, and found that one end of the bars would rise up as you glued the other down so I just I clamped the rest using my old iron (not heated) as a clamping weight and it worked well. The ribs are then planed to the correct thickness, being held in place with a simple clamp, as shown above. On each page, he includes a little map that shows where, on each rib, the template goes. A History of the Lute from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Two broad pairing chisels Because of the proportions I decided upon for my neck—relatively deep and narrow—my joint surface has ended up sloping slightly "backwards" the opposite way to that usually seen. This makes them more snack-like and better suited to creating party food snacks. It has been left over-length to be cut later when joining to the neck. I drew a pattern on handmade paper, which is stronger than modern paper (I practised cutting this on a very coarse grained piece of spruce and tried various knives and experimented unfruitfully with drilling out some waste) Unfortunately I used slightly water soluble ink for the drawing, which caused some problems later. Sawing off potentially cracked ends of the apple wood, to cut it to length.
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