I (John) spent 9 days in August 2005 with six other people learning how to build a renaissance lute. It's an event that lute builder David van Edwards runs most every year. We each stay in our own hotels each night, but from 9am until about 10pm every day, we're working together to build a lute (when we're not feasting on our hostess' meals, that is). David van Edwards estimates that it takes him 150 hours to build one lute, so given that we're all amateurs it's a tight schedule to fit all the work in. The picture on the left shows all of us, on the far left with our teacher and on the far right our hostess Thea. On the table are the wood pieces that we're starting from (no shortcuts!) |
The first task is cutting the ribs to shape, using a plastic shape stencil. Then, each rib is slowly heated by hand on a bending iron, and bent to shape. Each rib then is checked against the mold, and the fit to the mold needs to be quite exact, as well as the fit between each rib. This is the slowest part of the beginning, and took about 3 days to finish. It's very easy to over-bend the rib, in which case you have a kink that you need to unmake, which invariable causes a wobbling effect as the kinks don't un-kink perfectly. And if you heat the wood too many times, it stops being flexible, and you have to let it be for a day.
The rose (the fancy cut center hole in the soundboard) is made by punching through a photocopied pattern with angled chisels. We each practiced on chunks of discarded soundboard. I wimped out and didn't work on the final rose, because one small mistake and you've ruined everyone else's work. I'd rather work on things where when I screw up, I only destroy my work, not that of others! At any rate, the finished rose is shown below, and came out quite beautifully.
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While the other work is going on, each of us is busy making tuning pegs. These are made by putting a narrow chunk of wood into a wood turner, which spins it rapidly, as you approach the wood with a sharpened chisel. You have to go slowly, otherwise the chisel can get jammed and fly out of your hands, or you can carve too much into the wood. Also, as the wood gets thinner, it tends to vibrate slightly, which makes the wood rough-textured from your turning. Once the rough shape is made (middle picture) you sand it smooth while it's still in the wood turner, then you use an electric saw to chop off the ends. The taper on the pegs is perfected with some very expensive pencil sharpeners, and the pegs are painted black with a pure carbon and water mix. The far right photo shows a pip being made, which is a very small dot that goes into the end of the peg as decoration.
The bridge (which was carved entirely by hand) is glued on and braced under pressure. A end-piece is glued onto the end of the body, much thicker than the ribs, for strength and the soundboard is glued to the body. Lots of cellotape is used in David van Edward's technique, as it doesn't mar the wood, and stetches marvelously, providing tight clamp-like pressure throughout.
Once things are glued together, it's time to start sanding. The precision woodworking of the lute is achieved through successively smaller increments of improvements. The ribs fit so perfectly because they've been sanded to be perfect (small mis-fittings occur during the gluing to the mold). Similarly, the ultra-thin soundboard is achieved before gluing by planing and sanding, and then further perfected once glued to the top.
The peg box is made separately from several pieces of wood, and is glued on toward the end.
A number of "lute luminaries" where invited and stopped by to say hello.
Stephen Gottlieb, a good friend of mine and maker of a 6 course lute of mine, came by. Linda Sayce visited before giving a concert nearby. And Peter Forrester, a fellow builder, best known for his work on wire-strung instruments and his spectacular work with roses, and came by.
The final lute is shown below, and also in a group photo. We've put one string on it at this point, and I'm playing that string for all it's worth! David van Edwards had several more weeks work, though, applying the finish to the back of the instrument, as this take a many cycles of applying and drying. The final instrument is donated to the Lute Society as a "for hire" rental instrument, which generates revenue for the Lute Society (a very good thing!) as well as providing a decent instrument for a beginner to learn on.
Ok, this also isn't about London either but as our departure draws near I get more and more emotional about Clyde. He has a new routine. 
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