Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
Kurt Vonnegut
Hello there, my fellow artisans and handcrafts enthusiasts!
Welcome back to the final entry on the series of maintenance for my instruments. On this final bit, we'll look into the polishing of the newly applied finish and get the rest of the parts back on them to finally play them once more.
Let's jump to it!
Ask
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After sanding the last coat of finish for Ask's new back, we just need to get the polishing compound ready. We use a piece of an old sock to apply it and get to it. It's just like in Karate Kid. Wax on; wax off. But we can measure how much polish we want to bring to the piece by looking at the amount of passes we make with the cloth.
Wax doesn't make anything shine until you remove it. It works with some microparticles that remove some of the material in the layer and add gloss while doing it. After a few passes in circles, we can get an idea of how it will look. then, we remove it and end up with a shiny finish.
The last part of this is getting this instrument stringed up. And thus, Ask is ready to play once again!
Hopefully, I won't drop it again!
And this little accident makes me think I need to make stands for the instruments. I'll keep that in check as a future for the foreseeable future.
Embla
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This one has taken a lot of time to complete. Now that the finish is all sanded. It is time to polish. Here we'll need more elbow grease as we need to polish the whole instrument. And we're doing two coat. So even more effort goes into making Embla shiny. Just as she was when I finished her 5 years ago.
It is the same process, wax on; wax off. Once it looks shiny, we can start to get the tuning machines on. Just giving them a quick check to see if they still turn and nothing is broken. Then, we get them back in place and tighten the screws.
The last bit of work comes on getting the strings back on. I found these Aquila Strings in my closet. I remember I have used these before and are not my favorite. They have a lot of tension. The sound is almost metallic. But they will work as I'm planning on using Embla with a different tuning. Yup, not the traditional one, but one that now is dubbed Tenor. And for this we get the strings in ascending order from thickest to thinnest.
Taking the time to work on the maintenance of instruments is a key part of their life. Caring for something gives it more time to be useful. So, I'm glad I took my time to get my instruments back in shape. Of course, one of them got a pretty bad injury and it was the reason to have both on the bench.
For now, it's time to rest for a bit on the luthierie front, but I'm sure some new projects will pop off and some others about different kinds of woodworking are lurking around the corner.
In case you're wondering why the names of the instruments are Ask and Embla. It all goes back to the Nordic Myth of Human beginnings. As the story goes, Odin carved the first man and woman from logs of woods. Man was carved from Ash; woman from Elm. Thus, their names are Ask and Embla. And it looking fitting to give my instruments these names. Yes, they are not humans, but I carved them from wood. And making tool that makes music possible is something straight out of a myth. Plus, is other myths were humans are created from wood, they usually have no names and are just iterations of the process.
Thanks a lot for checking these entries and reading until the end.
See you in the comments section!
Fotos/Photos 📷: taken by me (Redmi Note 13)
Portada/Thumbnail 🖼️: by me, created with Canva.
Edición/Editing 🎬: by me, made with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
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