The progress reports

Each week (hopefully) we update this page with new photos of instruments in progress. The updates are usually made on Monday.

We hope that you enjoy seeing the progress on your instrument and those of others who have them on order.

Week ending July 29, 2002 - making a peg shaper

This is the process followed to make a peg shaper. These tools are commercially available for use by violin builders and repairers, but they do not typically go up to the diameter of peg used in a hurdy-gurdy. This design is from H.S. Wake's book on violin building.

A block of hard rock maple has already been drilled and reamed. Here it is being milled for the blade cavity.

The block has been drilled and tapped for the cap screws that will hold the blade in place.

Filing the edge of the blade to its angle. This is a piece of annealed (softened) oil-hardening tool steel. The slots for the cap screws have already been milled out.

Heating the blade to harden it. The colors of the picture make it look kind of purple, but the blade is actually glowing a bright orange. At this temperature it becomes nonmagnetic. After holding it at this temperature for 5 minutes, the blade is plunged into a vat of heated oil to quench it. This sudden cooling makes the blade very hard.

After being quenched, the blade is covered in a black scale. This scale is buffed off to reveal the hardened steel underneath.

The blade is too hard to use, because it is too brittle. To make it softer, but not as soft as the annealed steel that we started with, the blade is heated in the kitchen oven.

The blade is now sharpened on the slow-speed water stone system. The annealed steel was too soft to hold an edge, and the hardened steel was too brittle. This heat treated steel will now hold its edge without chipping or shattering.

The assembled peg shaper.

While we don't make something this involved every day, few weeks go by where we do not need to make some new jig or tool that is not commercially available.

See last week for more pictures.

Please contact us if you have comments or questions about this page or other pages on this site.

Alden and Cali Hackmann
Olympic Musical Instruments

Beati illi qui in circulum circumeunt, fient enim magnae rotae.

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