The progress reports

Each week we update this page with new photos of instruments in progress. The updates will usually be on Tuesday.

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

Week ending June 1, 2004

See last week, or next week, or the index of other weeks for more pictures.

I hesitate to use the work "disaster", but it's the one that comes to mind.

On Friday we had a rainstorm - it rained for hours, with no wind, and it hailed, and it rained some more. Our black locust trees didn't like it very much: they are in full bloom, and the blossoms filled up with water, and the already leaning branches got heavier and heavier...

... and then they fell down. We lost two big branches on one tree, and the whole trunk of another one fell into the creek. We were devastated, but it wasn't over...

...in the evening, a light rain began, and one of our largest trees also came down. It took about an hour from the time we first heard cracking sounds to the final failure.

Here's Cali surveying the damage.

OR3: prepping the instrument for FolkLife - here are the tangents after silver brazing, bead blasting, and coating. Do we have other pictures? No, because we were too busy finishing the instrument. Do we have pictures of the Over the Water crew playing at the Center House at FolkLife? No, because we were too busy doing it.

That's OR4, OR5, OR6, and OR7.

Today we had a tree-cutting crew in to start taking out our dangerous alder trees. Here's one of them way up in the first tree, removing the limbs.

Almost done - dropping the last piece.

This is all that is left: a stump, some logs, and a big pile of chips.

The big black locust with all the limbs removed, ready to drop the trunk.

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.

© Copyright 2000, 2005, Olympic Musical Instruments.
Please ask for permission to use material from this site. Thank you.