The progress reports

Each week we update this page with new photos of instruments in progress. The updates will usually be sometime on Monday, which is the end of our work week.

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

Week ending November 17, 2003

A busy couple of weeks, but our own minor trials and tribulations are sometimes overshadowed by world events. Our thoughts are on the families of the men and women who have recently given their lives in the conflict in Iraq, and especially on the 17 Italians whose lives were taken from them.

MK Pajot: using rare-earth magnets to hold the cleats in place on the underside of the soundboard

Pajot: the tap plate ready to be installed

Pajot: after shimming the holes in the keybox sides, Alden undertakes the laborious process of refitting the keys

Pajot: Key #7 was broken - instead of making a replacement, the original is kept by milling away the underside and gluing in new wood to hold the remainder of the key together

Pajot: the final steps for the new handle

Pajot: the head crank repaired earlier has reopened under pressure from the tuning peg, so three small pins were glued in to stabilize it - the pins are visible just above the lower edge of the pigmented area

Pajot: a custom pilot (at bottom) in a stock counterbore (top) for repairing the hole in the underside of the peghead

Pajot: a stack of custom tangent stock sits on the router table, ready to go to the laser to be made into tangent blanks

Pajot: an old repair to one of the keys: a small nail crosswise through the key, flattened on the other end in an attempt to keep the key from splitting

Pajot: more keys get reinforcing patches after tangent fitting shows them to have hairline fractures

Pajot: the chanters are on, the wheel is scraped, and the tangents are being fitted

AW's luteback - the keybox turned out to be too low for the strings to clear the wheel, so riser blocks are being added to the underside.

AWLB: fitting the keybox to the soundboard - again.

OR2: the drone strings are on

OR2: milling the sides of the tangent wrench

OR2: the completed tangent wrench, with the wrench at right and the magnetic holder sleeve at left

OR2: a view into the body cavity from the head block, through the hole for the tangent wrench

OR2: the tangent wrench in place, below the strap button

OR2: almost done!!

OR3 - cutting a disc blank from a block of the new experimental wheel material

The guitar: neck job and nut/saddle replacement is done - no picture ;-(

Another guitar: this is a 1967 Ramirez, quite valuable. Someone knocked over a sign and put a split in the soundboard. Here we are pursuading the cracked wood back into its proper alignment so we can glue and cleat it.

Cali worked very hard on this: if you look closely, you can see two small discolorations, just a little to the right of the center of the photo. This is all that is left of the gash left by the falling sign. The guitar is back with its owner for a concert next week.

This week's soundtrack: the Bangles' Doll Revolution. After 14 years they are back together, and sounding better than ever. A big thanks to Cali for picking this one up for me, and to NPR for interviewing them.

See last week, or next week, or the index of other weeks 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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