MIMF

The first two-three-four inches or so of the horn material wit the labium carved in it need to be reasonably aligned with the wind stream. Which is why the recorders work for you, and the horn doesn't. I suspect it curves away downwards practically immediately.

No, I wasn't. But as it happens, looked in (nearly a year after the question... Anyway, no, it's actually harder. Carving out the block from solid is the traditional way, That means, no matter how careful you are, the round part will never be absolutely exact. because you are fitting a hand-carved c...

Just an aside. The instrument in the photo is not actually a clavicytherium. It's a harp-piano. Clavicytheriums don't have an open harp-like frame, but are upright harpsichords, complete with a blind back plate as minimum. Apart from the earliest one known, also a complete soundboard.

I only saw it now. And Charlie, I only built a few, so not what I'd call a full-time professional builder. (However, I make a lot of kinds of instruments, so there is a bit of experience there.) Now to the point. In essentials the symphonie (there are many spellings) doesn't differ from the keybox o...

What's a fibre resin board? And before using it, are you sure it will take rosin? The thickness of the wheel makes the sound stronger or weaker. Also less or more refined. Some folk gurdies have very thick wheels, I know of a few that weigh in at 18mm. The French classical ones tend to be around 12m...

Barry, the tangents on all functional hurdy-gurdies are movable. There are more than one way of achieving it, the traditional ones look like flattish flags, pivoting on thin dowel-like protrusions. This is very important. Fixed frets are a pain, and it's impossible that they will be truly in tune. A...

I stopped using bone for woodwind. It tends to crack. Less readily than wood, but the results are far worse.
On the other hand, if you can find three pieces of straight antler of the right sizes, that would work very well.

Er, I hate to point this out, but ebonite is just another name for plastic. Of a sort. Acrylised wood does indeed have wood somewhere there, but to all practical purposes the instrument is pure plastic. What other good material do you have in mind?

The traditional material is gut. However, this has not been much used ever since the advent of nylon. So nylon it is, more than likely fishing line, as you say. Lutes have been (and are) equipped with tied-on frets ever since they have been in use. Go to Google images, and tap in "tying lute fr...

Once again far too late... there was no traditional way. the whole thin metal ring is a completely new technique. In the good old times they used horn rings, ivory rings (totally hopeless as a real help) and simply a thicker portion of the woodturning. You will be hard pressed to find any original m...

Actually, I have a while ago uploaded a short clip about how I bore the 4mm pilot hole.
Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKtTvDnJ1bU

Sorry for being late. I haven't checked out this thread for a while. The tool for starting the hole is exactly 4mm, the same as the D-bit. I go in maybe 5-6 mms. It's done by eye, so can be a bit different. Basically, enough to establish a straight, centered starting hole. I use the spade bit to enl...

That last one starts as a grand crescendo in some mega-romantic symphony. But otherwise, yes, you are certainly getting there. The actual tuning of the drones should be taken care of first. The last clip shows that it can be a bit improved. Thing is, when the strings on a gurdy are not completely in...

The bridge slots are practically always padded with paper shims. That's because just about all bridges are made the way violin bridges are, the grain running across. (That's why I make my bridges with the grain perpendicular to the soundboard - no shrinkage.) So with every weather change you need to...

Er, Charlie, I simply dunno. For one thing, there are plenty of players these days who opt for the two chanters an octave apart. It all depends on the string thickness. The reason I don't know is simply because I'm not familiar with the far more common French-type pitch, let alone the C/G one, which...

Well, old PDQ has used the windbreaker, and the slide windbreaker...(with a harpsichord continuo!) Also invented the Pandemonium... In the light of those, I think an unfinished gurdy fits right in.

Charlie, is there any further progress on the gurdy? You can't just shove it into a corner, you know. It needs some player familiar with the setting up to make it into a good instrument, that's all.

The difference is between having a designated hole for each tone, or cross-fingering, in which case 4 holes will do for an octave. In the second case, the instrument will be diatonic in the lower half, but cross-fingered semitones are usually possible higher up. In the first case, you can cross-fing...

The stopper is for fine-tuning the basic pitch. With any ocarina (or, for that matter, any flue woodwind especially, but to a lesser extent any woodwind) as you play, the pitch changes with the warming up and change in the moisture content of the instrument. Which means that if you play with a fixed...

http://wood-n-bone.co.nz/wooden_ocarina.jpg

I normally make these. Much cheaper. That was just a show-off.