Build your own Renaissance Lute!
TOOLS NEEDED
I have tried very hard to list only the minimum you need, in order to keep the cost down. As with all pursuits, equipment buying can easily get to be very addictive!
Glue pot.
I shall be dealing exclusively with hide glue for the lute. Not only was it the only glue used in original instruments, it is still by far the best for instrument making. The glue needs to be heated with some water in a bain-marie so that you can keep it just below boiling point while you are using it. This could be an expensive thermostatically controlled professional job, but a simple ceramic basin in a saucepan of boiling water is perfectly adequate. A sort of double boiler is exactly what I use, with the glue itself in a ceramic pudding basin with a ceramic lid which a potter friend made, which has a small separate lid for the brush. You can see it in the background to this picture:
The separate brush lid is the brownish blob in the shape of an elephant's head. If you use the most primitive version of this with an open saucepan with a glass jar holding the glue standing in the water, the steam arising from the water partially condenses into the glue jar and keeps it in the right consistency for longer. My close-coupled basin and water boiler stops this happening and so the glue tends to evaporate off and become thick too quickly, hence the special lids.
Also get a small round hog bristle artists' brush to use as a glue brush. I will explain exactly how to use this kind of glue in the course and why it is so much better than any other. So you will need some of this glue, also known as Scotch glue, hide glue, hot glue, rabbit skin glue etc. Get the best you can, I strongly recommend getting it from musical instrument makers suppliers. [see the separate list] If any of you insist on using Titebond or any of the other modern glues, that is your affair and I will be giving no support!! It's for your own good, so there!!
Also do beware of the so-called Liquid Hide Glue, this sounds like a wonderful idea, but it's no good at all for instrument making!
For a wonderful summary of the superior qualities of hide glue and recommendations for its use click here to see the FAQ prepared by Craig Deller, which he has kindly given me permission to re-publish.
Terrell Elliott has sent this useful tip for a cheap glue pot. There are other things like baby bottle warmers that work well too.
" Dear David and all first time lute makers, On the list of minimum tools David listed a method for melting the hide glue, i.e. a double boiler, electric glue pot, etc. as one of the items needed. The electric glue pots designed just for this purpose are rather expensive. Woodcraft catalogue lists one at $89.99 and the same one is sold for $160.00 by the International Violin Company. Thanks to my wife however I have found a much more frugal alternative. My wife purchased an electric potpourri warmer for $3.00 at a Dollar store, "Family Dollar" to be exact, and gave it to me when the flower pattern began to fade on the outside, and I found a perfect electric glue pot. The capacity is not as high, about half of the volume of the electric glue pot, but it holds the glue at exactly 145 degrees F, identical to the electric glue pot. The glazed surface of the ceramic pot in the warmer is just as easy to clean up as the stainless steel pot in the electric glue pot, and I have been using it for small jobs for about a year and have had no problems with it at all. This can be even cheaper than a bargain double boiler and is a lot less hassle. The only draw back is the capacity, about 8 oz, then the .75 liter capacity of the commercial electric pot wins for larger jobs. The potpourri warmer sure beats the $100.00 price tag of the last electric glue pot I purchased. "
A bending iron.This is not as hard as it sounds. An ordinary radiant electric fire will just do, but better is some form of heated curved surface you can push the wood against. A piece of scaffold pipe with a small blowlamp heating it is fairly dangerous but efficient. This iron of mine was cast into aluminium in the local foundry from a wooden and cardboard original and is heated from within by an electric element. Commercial bending irons can be bought from the specialist musical instrument makers suppliers. Similar ones can be made up using a large soldering iron element inside a shaped piece of metal.
Here are three alternative bending irons made up by people on the courses.
This one is heated by an electric light bulb. If you use this system make sure the holder is able to resist the heat, plastic ones will melt, as will ordinary flex, use the heat-resistant wiring sold for electric heaters.
Don’t leave any of these unattended for a moment!
A nice looking bending iron made up out of a short section of yacht mast. If you live near the coast you might be able to scrounge an offcut from a chandler or a yacht yard.
And finally I thought you might be interested in this photo of the gas fired bending iron being used in the Ramirez workshop in Spain!
One small low-angle block plane. I recommend either of the Stanley or Record planes Nos. 9-1/2 or 60-1/2, these have an adjustable throat which is useful for figured woods and for end-grain, but are very expensive. Fixed throat planes of a similar sort such as Stanley No. 220 are fine but do make sure that you can easily adjust the side-to-side angle of the blade. The blades that come with these planes are perfectly OK but better, laminated Japanese blades to fit these planes, can be bought from some of the specialist suppliers. Japanese-style wooden pull planes are an acquired taste, people tell me they are wonderful but I prefer the ease of adjustment of the western iron body planes. Both Axminster and Dick now sell Chinese or Taiwanese copies of these planes at about half the price. They appear to be identical and even have identical stock numbers. I have not tried them but they are probably functionally identical too.
A good straight chisel about 20mm. wide.
Any reputable make will do. Personally I prefer the Japanese laminated chisels, which stay sharp longer and are quicker to sharpen. Axminster now sells exactly the sort of thin paring chisel I prefer, which has been unavailable for some years in England, their stock number for it is 267139. As far as I can see this is not available from Dick.
A violin makers knife between 6 and 10mm wide.
This is just a piece of very good steel with sharply pointed blade shape at the end. Often used without a handle. Again, I prefer the Japanese laminated steel, but only the highest quality Japanese, the lower quality Japanese seem very brittle. The Swiss or German versions are very, very good, in some ways tougher, less likely to break off the extreme tip, which is the problem with all these knives, but they do take longer to sharpen. If you are a beginner, I would recommend the Swiss or German ones.
These are two of the knives I use, the one at the top is a Japanese laminated blade and the one at the bottom is a Swiss blade with handle.
A scalpel. You won't need this until you come to cutting the rose. I recommend the American X-acto scalpels in the small size, they hold their blades closer to the end and are therefore more stable than the English Swann Morton ones. The Canadian Veritas type are as good as the X-acto but nicer looking and therefore more expensive. However either would be fine. These are for piercing the rose and I will be recommending a way of modifying the blades for this purpose. Also get the little fine sawblade to fit this handle, it will be very useful for cutting off the ends of the bars.
An accurate ruler with metric markings.
If you are buying one specially I would recommend the thin flexible steel rulers such as Rabone No. 64 FR But to be honest a decent plastic ruler will be fine.
A small woodworking vice.
One that can open to 150mm will be just large enough. This can be either a table mounting one with a clamping screw for fastening temporarily to the kitchen table, or a more permanent affair screwed to a workbench. It does not have to be good quality, I find my cheap thirty year old one that came from a gift catalogue is especially useful because it is loose and can hold slightly tapering objects like lute bridges! The jaws need to be lined with a small piece of wood on each side to prevent marking your lute parts., see the illustration.
Two G cramps.
You will need to fasten one end of each rib to your table or workbench in order to plane it to thickness. The cheapest way of doing this is to use a G cramp and a piece of scrap wood to protect the rib. The size of the G cramp, therefore, depends on the thickness of your table. The other G cramp is to cramp the fingerboard on to the neck. It may seem excessive but I would advise getting 150mm size, because a baroque lute neck is quite wide and you need the pressure to be central.
A roll of Sellotape and dispenser.
Well, actually do not get real Sellotape, as it is not strong enough! Get the much cheaper polypropylene tape which stretches and cannot be broken by hand. My system of building the back relies heavily on this adhesive tape and it is worth finding the right stuff. Everybody says 'What did the original makers do without sellotape?' but they probably used pins into their moulds with wedges to hold each rib hard up to the next one. No moulds have survived so we don't know. But most makers now use tape.
The picture also shows my glue pot and glue brush and the recommended size of G cramp.
An ordinary hand drill.
You've probably got one somewhere! You don't need an electric drill. Four drill bits are needed: 1.1mm, 1.5mm, 3mm, and 4.3mm.
A small saw.
A coping saw will do everything you need. A small bandsaw is incredibly useful but you CAN get away with just a hand saw, and the coping saw will enable you to cut out the inside of the mould, which otherwise would be difficult.
A small fretsaw or jeweller's saw.
With a packet of medium blades. This is not for the rose (!) which is cut with knives, but for cutting out the bridge.
A screwdriver!
A piece of cabinet scraper steel.
Get a piece about 0.5mm thick and borrow some tin-snips to cut it into a curved shape as shown in the picture. I will give detailed instructions on sharpening this, which, surprisingly, is an almost unknown art!
A pair of calipers. For measuring the thickness of your ribs, the diameter of the pegs and the edges of the soundboard. These can be very expensive but this is not necessary, get the cheapest and smallest you can find. You also need a long-reach caliper to measure the thickness of the soundboard all over, however these are expensive from specialist instrument makers suppliers. I show here a version I had cast in aluminium by a local foundry, but it is possible to achieve the same function with a bolted together construction of angle aluminium to hold the dial gauge a set distance apart from the “anvil”, I will be giving details during the course. Next to it on the right is the cheap caliper.
A reamer This should be 1 in 30 taper, in other words the standard violin peg taper. The specialist suppliers stock these. This will fit the pegs that Phil Brown produces. For the renaissance lute, I strongly recommend the small spiral violin reamer that Dick GmBH sells. It is the golden coloured reamer in the centre of the picture and cuts like a dream. The gold colour is a ceramic coating which is supposed to prolong its life. I used to use the quick spiral taper pin reamer at 1 in 50 taper. This, however, means that you have to use the harder wood for pegs such as cocobolo, as a softer wood like plum will push through too much. The advantage of these reamers is that they can be used in a hand drill or even an electric drill and make fitting the pegs much quicker. But the new spiral hand reamer is almost as quick and more controllable.
The picture shows the quick spiral taper pin reamer on the left, the hand spiral small violin reamer in the centre and the violin reamer on the right
Finally, some means of sharpening your plane iron, knife and chisel.
Your dad's old oilstone is really not quite good enough! If you are really hard up it will do, but you will never be able to get a sharp edge and most of your work will be much harder as a result. There are two schools of thought here: either a very hard smooth stone such as an Arkansas stone, which scarcely wears away at all and remains beautifully flat; or a softer stone made up of tiny hard particles in a weak matrix, which wears away rapidly exposing new sharp edges all the time. I strongly prefer the latter system which is exemplified in the Japanese water stones and the Belgian stones. Either way get a 1,000 grit for initial sharpening and a very fine grit, say 10,000 grit, for final finishing. The German firm of Apex [The box says Apex-Sal-Abziehsteine] produces a very economical double-sided stone which does both jobs admirably. All these stones, whatever the system chosen should be used with water, not oil, as a lubricant to wash away the swarf out of the pores of the stone.
I think that's the lot!