Hello, Dolly

One nice thing about harpsichords is that they're portable. Just about every harpsichord in the world weighs well under 200 pounds, and two people who know what they're doing can move one up and down stairs, into and out of houses and rehearsal spaces without too much trouble -- if one of those people has a dolly. Up to now I've used someone else's dolly when I needed to move an instrument, but yesterday I built one of my own. Pretty straightforward process -- cut 2x4's to the right length, nail them together, attach wheels and carpeting. But anything involving the table saw is a bit scary, and making sure the wheels don't wobble is a bit fussy, and overall it took a lot longer to assemble than I thought it would.

On with the bridges

The two bridges, for the two 8-foot choirs and the 4-foot choir, are now glued onto the soundboard. Gluing down bridges is a tricky operation -- if they wind up in the wrong spot, you can't pick them up and try again.

I started with the 4-foot bridge. I put it in place, secured it with go-bars, then outlined the profile with small nails, so as to form a trough for the bridge to sit in. The nails look like this:



Then I masked off the surrounding area with tape, so as to minimize the amount of excess glue I'd have to clean off the soundboard.



At this point I'm ready to glue the thing down. Hide glue is nasty, smelly stuff, and once it's on the wood you've got about 90 seconds to finish the operation before it sets up and becomes unusable. So, moving quickly but not hurrying, I brushed the glue onto the soundboard and affixed the bridge, this time with many more go-bars.



Once the bridge was glued on, I waited about half an hour and then removed the tape and the nails and started to clean up the glue. The glue reaches a gelatinous consistency about 30 minutes after application (more or less, depending on the room temperature), and that's the time to clean it up, before it hardens. Once it was cleaned up, it looked like this:




Next up was the 8-foot bridge, which is much like the 4-foot bridge, only bigger and heavier and more difficult to position. Here's what it looked like, ready to glue:



Here's a closeup of the bridge just after gluing:



And after the nails and tape and excess glue were removed:



Next up: the ribs underneath the soundboard.