Welcome

Welcome to this online record of my project to build a harpsichord completely from scratch.

That means that my instrument will be built almost entirely from raw materials. It is not a kit such as those made by Zuckermann Harpsichords or Hubbard Harpsichords, by which is meant an instrument that is made of accurately cut parts sold largely disassembled to the buyer, who then puts everything together.

With few exceptions, all the wooden parts of the instrument will be made from rough boards that I will purchase and mill down to the appropriate dimensions. The exceptions will include items made from certain exotic woods and the critically important soundboard, which will be supplied as a series of boards about 1/4" thick and around 6" wide. I'll still need to joint and glue them up but at least I won't be resawing 8-foot long boards: we don't have the facilities for that here.

Speaking of facilities, I'll be using my father's woodwoorking equipment, which is spread out between the basement and the garage. In these two locations, there's pretty much everything one could need (except for major resawing, as noted) as far as large power tools and various smaller hand tools go.

Metal parts are a different story: I'm not a blacksmith, so I'll be ordering tuning pins, bridge pins, hitch pins and so forth from the appropriate sources. Most of the professional makers pretty much do that anyway.

This project is based on the 1531 harpsichord by Alessandro Trasuntino (see the photo in the sidebar), which is currently in the collection of instruments at the Royal College of Music in London, England. I obtained a full-size drawing of the Trasuntino which features views of the instrument from various angles. The internal details have been deduced from X-rays and by peering through cracks and such.

I intend to focus this blog solely on making this harpsichord. As such, I don't think I will add anything more to my profile, such as my real identity (although there are not that many harpsichordists in major Canadian cities, so someone could find me out). A few people will know who I really am, but apart from that I don't need the supposed glory of having my real name out there on the Internet. I probably won't even appear in any of the photos that will soon be forthcoming.