MIMF

If the tires were cut from the same bad batch of rubber, they could break at the same time, because they would get hard and crack at the same time. I agree-time for urethane tires.

Handles for tea and coffepots were usually ebonized pear, in the 18th centuries, and I think viol fingerboards often were, as well. But the iron tannate inks will often chew up the paper they're written on, over time, so it would not surprise me if those iron tannate stains might do the same for woo...

Hey, a Melodica based on the musette accordion system. You could do whole tone triplets with ease! If you go to the Pierre Dreux site, who's making them, and listen o some of the sound clips, accordionists like Richard Galiano seem to be doing nice music with them. There are few players of that syst...

Thanks, Charlie. Might try the spring-loaded steady rest. I think there's something older, that's just a flexible slat of maple, sprung against the spindle. But spring-loaded wheels would need less adjustment. The pressure from the tailstock was one reason I thought about using a mandrel. I have see...

So I have been turning some tabor pipes out of fruit woods. The small ones are not much trouble but the low ones have to be about 45cm to start, and with a bore of 12 mm they seriously chatter, while I'm finish turning. Using a a heavy leather glove and the small gouge helps, and I would not be surp...

I've used regular wood filler on wenge, with some burnt umber pigment tossed in to darken it. Seal first with shellac. A plastic autobody putty spreader is the perfect tool both for applying it and squeegeeing the extra paste off. When it sets up a little, rub sideways across the grain with a coarse...

I feel like a Luddite, here, but if you can't access an old geometry textbook you can search under "ellipse + two thumbtacks" and get plenty of hits on how you can draw a pretty decent ellipse with a pencil, loop of string and two pushpins. The push pins hold quite nicely in any softwood s...

A lot of the hammered dulcimers of the mid 1800's were put together with casein. It tended to last for about 50 years, whether from the instruments going out of fashion and being stored in damp basements, permitting bacteria to eat the glue, or because of alkali I don't know. Lots of those autoharp-...

Microwaving green wood works pretty well. Turners use it all the time- for boxwood, it's maybe the best method. But here, you'd have to be building a ukulele. Those are big pieces of aluminum, and you'll have a really stiff guitar. There are some design programs ( like Solid Works) that will tell yo...

If it's been long in damp storage, check to make sure the top and back have not come loose from the frame; there is often a separation of the glue joint of the back, under the tuning pin block , and sometimes the top, too, just in front of the tuning pin block . If those have failed, there's nothing...

I don't know whether you'd call that section a neck, or an upper bout. Anyway, it has the look of a marquetry panel, so you'd assemble out of veneers and then glue onto the upper bout. I would imagine the rectangle-with-round-ends would be curly maple or something like, bordered by some kind of blac...

Another Marxophone-like gizmo. I thought it might be a Dolceola [ http://www.minermusic.com/dolceola/dolceola.htm ] but am not sure. The fretlesszither.com site does not show anything exactly like it, either- unless I mistake the category..

My understanding of Paraguyan harps was that they're un-levered. A friend was touring in Yanni's orchestra years ago and told me the harpist simply hauled around several harps tuned in different keys- and those harps are BIG, so that was really no small matter. Go with running the strings out of the...

David, what "other ones" are you talking about? Do you have a manufacturer? A 20 w transducer would be something to see, that's a lot of current.

Of course, it might crack the harpsichord, making those Chladni patterns.

It's similar to a German scheitholt, in that it's got staples in the soundboard instead of frets in a fretboard, and drones with only one melody string course. I like it that the staples are made of something shiny, like nickel silver/cupronickel, instead of steel or iron. You don't show whether it'...

Hand tools cost less than big machine tools, no doubt. Good hand skills and hand tools give you an enormous amount of flexibility, and there are some things that machines can't do- like inlay purfling on a fiddle-so if you have those skills you can be hard to replace. And that is a concern, with CNC...

I suspect there's a lot of difference in shrinkage between flat-sawn and quarter-sawn jatoba, that makes anything not one or the other move a lot. And there's hard-to-see reaction wood as well- which could be the curliness you noticed. Run-of-the-mill jatoba boards often bend and warp when ripped do...

I have non-openable skylights. They do help with light; it's nice to have a source of natural light in order to judge colors. I like being able to see out a window, but do agree with Mario about them, though- wall space holds tools and shelves and such , that windows occupy. If I had a small shop, I...

Liquidambar is not a eucalypt, alas. It might be more interesting if it was, I have used some eucalypts with very lively figure and color. When freshly cut sweet gum has some nice colors, like box elder, but the heartwood quickly turns into a kind of gray. As far as density and strength, it seems si...

I do not want to sound alarmist, and defer to your greater experience. However, repeatability is an important aspect of instrument making- if you you make very nice sounding instrument, you want to know how to make it again. Do you think that the quality of the box on the market now is such that tha...