Building a hurdy-gurdy

[Charlie Schultz]

Thanks Yuri- wow, what a great reference on strings!

Well, I've been working on some of the little bits for a while. Here are the bridges for the melody and drone strings.

Melody strings bridge

Drone strings bridge

And the trumpet bridge holder.

Trumpet bridge holder

The main tuning pegs.

Tuning pegs

Also worked out the tailpiece. Here it is, temporarily in position. I've used viola fine tuners for the string holders.

Tailpiece

Next, worked on setting up the "nut".

Fitting the "nut"

You can probably see that some notching is needed to give the strings some room- this isn't shown on the plan but is in one of Wilfried's photos that I posted earlier. I put in some notches with a round rasp and then glued the separator on and drilled clearance holes for the strings.

[Charlie Schultz]

Worked on the keybox a little. Here I've marked out for the two rows of keys:

Key locations marked

The holes are nominally 8 mm x 6 mm. I used a 0.25" mortising bit (with the two sides taped together).

Mortised holes

And then the buttons for the tangents to sit on, in place. Still need to add the buttons of course.

[Bob Gramann]

This is a fascinating project. Do you mind sharing how you made the buttons on the tuning pegs?

[Charlie Schultz]

The pegs were turned on a lathe from rectangular (looking at it from the end) pieces.

Peg blanks

Took me a couple tries to get it right. Here I've got the tapered part to the length I want it.

Tuning peg on lathe

Then pretty much shaped.

Roughed out peg

Then I just smoothed things out. It was back and forth on the lathe 5-6 times to get the taper right.

Then to put the curve in the tops, I just took them to the spindle sander (2" diameter spindle) and sanded the curve in. For the smaller pegs (e.g. on the tail piece), I used a handsaw to get the flats and then some sandpaper wrapped around a dowel.

I wrapped a piece of sandpaper around the outside of the peg (sanding surface out) to get the matching taper in the headstock.

There are probably more efficient ways to make them- like maybe cutting the flats in before turning, etc.

[Bob Gramann]

Thank you. I appreciate you sharing your method. I'm always on the lookout for an elegant way to make buttons.

[Steve Senseney]

Charlie--Your pictures in the most recent post are not showing on my computer!!

[Charlie Schultz]

Yeah, we had some maintenance done on the server yesterday and lost a few posts/pictures. They are working on restoring them- hopefully they'll be there in the next half-hour or so.

[Steve Senseney]

The pics are back. Thanks.

[Charlie Schultz]

Time for an update.
Here I've added the "buttons" to the ends of the keys.

Keys with "buttons"

And here's the keybox glued up and ready to glue to the instrument.

Keybox shell glued up and ready to glue to the rest of the instrument

Here's the prepared tangent stock. Actually I redid this as I thought the taper was a little to shallow, but the idea was to get the shape on a long strip and then cut it into the individual tangents.

Tangent start

And the finished tangents (with mounting holes). The tangents for the bottom keys are about 7/8" high, the top keys, about 1/2" high.

Tangents

Obviously not period construction here <g>

Bottom row of keys

And with both sets.

Top row added

[Jason Rodgers]

So cool! After depressing a key, how does it retract?

[Simon Magennis]

Hurdy-gurdys are usually played hanging from a strap around your neck so that the keys point downwards. So gravity (probably with a little help from the kick-back from the string tension) does the job.

[Charlie Schultz]

Yes, what Simon said. Although I read somewhere about people using springs to return the keys. I plan to add a little strip of felt inside the keybox so the tangents don't clunk against the side.

[Charlie Schultz]

Time for another update...

Here's most of the bits (cover holder, bridges) in place on the top.

Various bits in place

Holes for the drone strings (similar hole for the trumpet on the other side).

Holes for the drone strings

At this point I had to string it up!

Testing!

The vibrating strings have a surprisingly (to me) large arc! And I have to say it sounds a bit like a sick cow <g>.

There seem to be a couple common tunings- here's the one I'm starting with (C/G).

Tuning

tuning.PNG (6.59 KiB) Viewed 22901 times

And the (not cheap) strings:
Chanters/melody 1 & 2: Savarez BRH 94 (gut, 0.94 mm diameter)
Trumpet: Savarez BRH 97 (gut, 0.97 mm diameter)
Small/hi drone: Savarez BFA 422 (wound on gut, 1.23 mm diameter)
Large/lo drone: Savarez BFA 1002 (wound on gut, 1.79 mm diameter)

Still lots of work to do: a few more small pieces to be made and added, (carve? and) attach keybox cover, then of course clean up/sanding/finishing. I don't know how, but I completely missed putting in the sound hole on the top (the plan shows it on the left edge).

[Randy Cordle]

When I was playing around with HG one of the hardest things to find was the raw cotton for cottening the strings. I missed it if you touched on cotton. Any problems in cottoning the strings or rosining the wheel? All the setup info I remember from the past stated the importance of that for not quickly wearing out the (yes, expensive!) strings.

Thanks for the fun topic and posts, Charlie!

[Chuck Tweedy]

Wow, what a project!
Nice job Charlie.

[Charlie Schultz]

Thanks Chuck and Randy.

I just used a cotton ball to cotton the drones (since I only have the strings on to test it out). I saw that "long strand" cotton was recommended (same as raw?). And I wondered if wool would work too?
As far as the rosin, I have a bar of hard rosin which I rubbed on the wheel (not sure if I'm getting enough on or not).
The other thing I'm a little unclear on is how much "break angle" there should be between the wheel and the bridges.

[Yuri Terenyi]

As to the "break angle", there shouldn't be any. A very experienced professional maker/player (unlike me) I talked to said when he is about to cotton up the strings, they are floating above the wheel , but so closely that you can just squeeze a sheet of cigarette paper in between, but nothing more than that. It's the cotton that makes the contact. Talking about that, there shouldn't be any angle between any of the strings and the wheel surface. (meaning parallel, all strings to the wheel surface.)

[Charlie Schultz]

Thanks Yuri!

[Charlie Schultz]

I managed to add the soundhole (per the plan)- it's not much to look at but the top of the instrument is pretty busy.

Soundhole

Next I made the string catches for the drones and trumpet.

Bridges

And here they are in use:

The only other piece to add is the capo for the trumpet string and it looks kind of involved (a couple gears), I might just skip it...

And started carving the keychest top- this is going to be simple, just some flowers and hearts.

I've also started sanding and cleaning up the rest of the instrument for the finish.

[Patrick Hanna]

Hey, Charlie,
To my eye, this looks like one of the most ambitious building projects I've seen on this or any other forum in a very long time. I've seen hurdy gurdies, but, frankly, I don't know what makes them work. No matter. You're going to show me what makes them work. Press on, my man. Straight ahead, and keep us all posted. I suspect there are lots more people watching this thread than have actually posted thus far. I, for one, want to see your continuing progress.
Patrick