Soundboard down

The soundboard has been successfully installed. Most of the time, harpsichord building is a solo endeavor, but to glue in a soundboard you need help. That's because hide glue has a very short "open time" -- that is, once you brush it on it sets up very quickly, so you've got about 90 seconds to brush glue on all the side rails and the 4-foot hitchpin rail, put the soundboard in, and brace it with go-bars. No one can do that alone, so for this one I enlisted the help of several friends, the harpsichord equivalent of a barn-raising.

In order to extend the open time of the glue slightly, I heated up the wood of the case with heat lamps, like so:



Then the troops gathered round, and we did the job. That's me carrying the soundboard at about 30 seconds in.



The final product:



Many thanks to Kevin, Ron, and Per for their help with the installation.