What does my cigar box fiddle sound like?

 Keep in mind that I'm barely past Hot Cross Buns on the fiddle.  I'm not a competent player of what can be the most lovely and expressive instrument in the world.  But I am a guy who made this silly thing and wants to share it.  Just take it as an example of what a cigar box instrument sounds like.

 

Cigar Box Fiddle

 

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I love the idea of a musical instrument made from junk. My wife tolerates my interest. Nothing presented here is really new or particularly innovative. It is just me turning a cigar box into a playable fiddle.  If you are planning to do the same, I hope this provides inspiration and ideas.

My starting point is a cigar box I got in Arizona while visiting family. The wood is just a piece of scrap wood I had in the workshop. I’m not sure what kind of wood it even is, just something hard. I know it isn’t maple, birch, or cherry, but I don’t know what it is. The first step was creating a plan. Just a big piece of paper, trace the cigar box, and estimate the rest of the details.

I cut out the neck shape and another piece for the heel.

This is how they’ll go together.

Some basic shaping on the belt sander before glue-up.

Drilling the holes for the tuners before I get the neck too far. I’m just using guitar tuning machines. I could make friction pegs cheaper, but the guitar tuners are easy to use and easy to install. And I don’t need fine tuners.

To make the tuners accessible to the strings, I need to open up a slot in the head. I could try to chisel it out like a standard violin peghead, but this is so much easier. Drill a couple of 3/4” holes…

...and use a scroll saw to connect them.

This is how the tuners will be installed.

The cigar box is fairly sturdy, being solid wood with actual finger joints at the edges, but I don’t trust it to be sturdy enough to withstand the string tension. So, here are a couple of 5/16” poplar scraps I had in the shop. I’m going to glue them into the ends to give a little more rigidity.

Like so.

And a bass bar, made from scrap pine, can be glued to the soundboard (bottom of the cigar box) while the end reinforcements are still clamped up.

Once the glue is dry, I can make the sound holes. This is not my idea, but when I saw another cigar box fiddle with sound holes like this, I thought it was brilliant. I just used my belt sander with the 8” wheel to sand out big notches. This does two things. It allows for the sound to come out and it creates the effect of the side bouts, which normally form the waist in a standard violin. An arched bridge is needed to access one string at a time with the bow, but the bow needs to be at a fairly steep angle to the bridge when playing the highest or the lowest strings. The waist of the instrument allows the bow to touch the string at such an angle.

And it looks really cool with a lot less effort than carefully cutting out a standard f hole.

Before gluing the poplar reinforcements into the box, I drilled pilot holes for a couple of screws and also hollowed out the parts that I didn’t think needed extra strength. Here, you can see why I wanted the screw holes. I don’t trust glue alone to be enough to hold on the neck. A normal violin has a mortise cut into the block of wood at the top of the body so the neck has a mechanical joint as well as the glue to hold it. I’m just being lazy and using screws.

Time to finish up the shape of the neck and blend the heel in. This is a bit chunkier than my actual violin’s neck, but it didn’t seem that way when I was out in the shop working on it. Seemed really delicate at the time.

Finger board of maple. (I actually ended up using a different piece of maple for the finger board, but the process is as shown here.)  

Shaped at the sander to get the arched surface.

And here’s how it will fit on the neck.

Some time back, I turned a piece of scrap wood on my dad’s lathe to make end peg buttons for a different project. Here are 3 spares, one of which is going to be part of this fiddle.

I cut one off, drilled and countersunk a hole, and found a screw to attach it.

Attaching the neck. A very close observer will see that I didn’t actually use the planned screws. I drilled the pilot holes in the neck and heel just a little cockeyed and the screws wouldn’t work. I ended up redrilling them at 1/4” and putting in dowels instead. I hope it is strong enough. Anyway, just getting a clamp to hold the neck firmly in the right place was a bit of an adventure, but I ended up with a bar clamp doing the job pretty well.

The tailpiece!  I'll use the scroll saw to add little notches above the holes so the strings can sit in the notches and not pop out of the holes.  The tailgut is just going to be threaded through the two lower holes.

And here I’m estimating how high the bridge will sit. Way too low. There’s no way to access the strings with a bridge this low. I’d have to play all of them at once and that’s not what I want.

So more of that scrap poplar comes to the rescue! I made a wedge to sit under the finger board and raise the angle. Ordinarily, the neck is attached at an angle that allows for the strings to reach the bridge at the right height. I miscalculated the angle when I did this and I’m compensating with a wedge.

Gluing the box shut. The lid slides in grooves in the sides, rather than being hinged. With a good bit of wood glue, that lid isn’t going to slide ever again.

I used masking tape to cover the surface on the neck that will have the fingerboard and wedge glued to it. Then I wiped shellac over the body and head. I noted that violins normally have no finish on the neck where the musician holds it. This is because the lacquer is sort of grippy and it is hard to slide the hand to another position if there’s lacquer on the neck. I’m going to oil this wood later because I want the protection from dirt and hand oils, but the oil finish should allow for the hand to move as it needs to.

I put finish on the original stickers. Many cigar boxes have a lot more decorative paper on them, but I didn’t have one of the right size for a fiddle. In the future, perhaps I’ll get a box that will be covered with decorative paper like my cigar box jouhikko.

The bridge! A scrap of maple and a few minutes on the drill press and scroll saw.

Attaching the fingerboard. I had glued the wedge on to the fingerboard first.  It is starting to look like a fiddle!

Sound post! This serves to physically connect the top and back of the instrument. I’ve heard a couple of explanations for how it works to enhance the sound and both sound plausible. One says that this transmits vibrations to the back when the top vibrates. Thus, both the top and back of the instrument vibrate to contribute to the sound. The other explanation I heard says that this actually creates a relatively immobile point on the top, where the treble foot of the bridge (closest to the highest string) then rotates slightly to active the bass bar, which is below the lowest string. I don’t know which is more accurate or whether both are happening at once. I do know that a sound post in other instruments I’ve built makes a huge difference in both volume and tone.

I’m no expert on setting sound posts. Here’s my initial insertion with my pocket pliers.

And a tool made from scrap wire to adjust the placement.

Good enough for now.  Depending on the sound, I may have to adjust the location of this sound post to get better tone or volume.  Not that I expect much from a plywood soundboard in a cigar box that is essentially a waste product.  But we shall see.

A nut is made from scrap maple. It kind of matches the fingerboard. String grooves in the nut are made with a tiny file.

And here it is, all assembled! I used a set of the absolute cheapest violin strings on Amazon. I think I got half a dozen sets of strings for maybe $15. I’d be ashamed to show them to my daughter’s violin teacher. For this instrument, though, I’m not going to drop $50 on a set of strings when I have less than $20 in the rest of the instrument. Half of that is for the guitar tuners.

But tuning it showed me that there’s an issue with that tailpiece. It seemed like a great idea to drill holes that would let the ball ends of the strings drop through and then the string would fit into the little slot. Only the tension of the string caused the ball end to rotate up and out of the hole, so the strings wouldn’t stay put!

A new tailpiece took maybe 10 minutes to make.

And it is done. It sounds remarkably more violin-like than I imagined. Check back tomorrow for a really badly played sound sample.

Some Thoughts on Burnout and Largesse in the SCA

 It has been almost a full year since I last posted.  But since nobody reads this blog anyway, that's okay, right?  I've been making things and doing things and I hope to share a few pictures of my things before long, but for now I just want to vent a little bit and I really don't think my family needs to hear any more of this particular beef.

I don't think it is a secret that I used to be active in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism).  My medieval interests have inspired a lot of the material I've shared on this blog already.  I don't want to get into a long story, though, just share a few thoughts.

The most recent princess in Oertha (Alaska) put out a request on social media a couple of weeks ago for donations of largesse.  That got me thinking and grumbling about how things have changed.

If you are not in the SCA (and actually care about what this is all about), largesse is a term for gifts given within the SCA.  When I started, back in the 1990s, how it worked was that if I made something that I wanted to give as a gift, I simply gave it to the person who I wanted to give it to.  Elsewhere on this blog is an example of a Viking necklace, based on the one from the Hon hoard, that my wife and I gave to a friend who recognized the work and skill in it.  That was largesse back then.  We also gave other things to other people, from hand-sewn clothing to beads to armor.  It was all largesse, as we used the term back then.

And then I quit doing SCA stuff for a long while, mostly because I have a real life that needs my focus and attention.  Raising kids, building a house, going back to school, getting a professional job, all those things that are wonderfully meaningful to me and totally boring for anyone else to read about.  And the last few years, I've started paying attention to the SCA again.  Which brings us to the recent request for largesse.

It turns out that a new concept of largesse has become the norm.  Now, when a person who is good with a stick wins a tournament and becomes royalty (which makes sense only to people who know how the SCA works, so don't ask me to explain it here), that person and his/her consort (the prince and princess, in this case) want to be the ones to give out the gifts.  They want to look like generous people, bestowing gifts upon those who they want to recognize or reward.  

But, and here's the really odd thing, they don't seem to want to put in any effort to make anything themselves.  So they ask everyone else to make a bunch of things they can give away.  In other words, largesse has become the province of the people who are good at fighting and functions as a tax on the artisans of the group.  

Yeah. 

Another digression.  There are a lot of things people do in the SCA.  But fighting is a bit different from most of the activities.  If I play music, perform magic tricks, or tell stories, I'm directly entertaining other people.  My fun is for the benefit of others.  If I teach people to play a lyre, make a bead, or carve a spoon, my fun again benefits others.  If I sew really nice clothes, it at least makes the standard of appearance in the group a bit nicer.  And then everyone can benefit from the better looking group and perhaps feel a bit more medieval themselves.  But fighting is one of the things that only benefits the individuals doing it, rather than the group as a whole.  

So, my current impression is that now the people who do the least to contribute to the enjoyment of the group as a whole want everyone else to make gifts that these fighters can have the fun of giving away.  The least creative element wants to get the credit for being generous with the work of the creative people.  

Why does this make sense to anyone?

HOW TO INSPIRE ARTISANS LIKE ME AND GET COOL LARGESSE

So, what's a better way to get the largesse?  I've already noted that the fighters who win the tournaments generally are not the same as the craftsfolk who make the cool things.  

A very authentic way to get the largesse would be to actually go pay money to artisans for their work.  If Hrothgar gave a gold arm ring to a warrior he wanted to honor, he would have paid the goldsmith, not said "I want to give some arm rings to people.  Please make me a dozen at your own expense.  Oh, and deliver them to me by this weekend because I'm in a hurry."

I do acknowledge that in a hobby group we can't really expect the folks playing the part of royalty to spend thousands of dollars on the gifts they want to give.  So, that leaves us with three options.  First, keep on as it is (which is going to burn out your artisans pretty darned fast - more on burnout shortly).  Second, quit giving out so many gifts (but there seems to be a current culture of trying to keep up with the other royals, which includes having a lot of things to give away).  And then, my idea for a third route.

If you were to come to me and say "you are a skilled bladesmith and bead maker and I want to give away a bunch of your knives and beads," I'm going to start by telling you a price for my work.  Then I'll tell you how long it would take to deliver such an order.  (If you're wondering, my simplest blacksmith knives start at $75.  A nice hunting knife is anywhere from $300 to $400, depending on details and options. Individual beads hover around the $10 mark.) And then you get sticker shock and revert to option one, expecting me to donate a dozen knives so you can feel special giving them away.

In other words, in my shop, the answer is a resounding NO.

But if you really want the products of my workshop, there is a very good way to get them.  This is the third route, that I'm not aware of actually being used.  Come talk to me in person.  Say something like "you are a talented bladesmith and bead maker.  Will you please teach me to make a basic knife or beads I can give away as largesse?"  Because you are not an oaf, you'll offer to pay for the material involved.  And because you know how to motivate me, you'll also order a pizza during the day so we don't have to stop to cook a meal.

Aha!  You just discovered the key to my workshop!  You asked me to teach you how to put some of your own skin in the game!  

Because posting a Facebook message asking people to make a bunch of gifts for you to give is going to get you absolutely nothing from my workbench.  Nothing.  

But asking me to teach you so YOU can make things to give will be a very successful way to get my expertise involved.  

If you want beads, I'll set you to cranking out basic seed beads.  The simple round spacer beads that are not very sexy to make, but are so important to an actual piece.  I'll start knocking out bigger focal beads.  And at the end of a couple of weekends, you'll have all the beads you wanted for these gifts.  You'll have made a whole lot of them, too.  And you'll think carefully about how you hand them out because you will know just how much time and effort is involved.

Or if you want a knife to give, I'll teach you do to the rough forging to get the blades forged to shape.  Once you've done two or three while I watch, you can bang them out while I do grinding and get them ready for heat treating.  See where this is going?  You'll do the part that takes more muscle, I'll do the part that takes more finesse, and together we will end up with a bunch of knives.  And when you give them away later, you'll know that you put at least an hour into each of them.  And you'll know that these are something special.  This is important when giving a gift.  YOU, the imaginary royalty, will have some skin in the gift game.  

If you expect me to set aside my weekend to help you and then tell me you only have two hours for some reason (fighter practice, hangover, other people you want to hang out with), don't even ask in the first place.  That's not putting skin in the game.  That's insulting me.  

BURNOUT

I know this is getting really long, but I want to talk about one more thing.  In the SCA, burnout is very common.  People burn out on doing the things this group does, then they struggle to put words to their reasons.  It took me a lot of years to finally figure it out for myself, but I think this is true of everyone.

People do not burn out on doing the things they love and enjoy.

But people absolutely do burn out on imposed obligations.  

Do you see the connection to the expectation of largesse?  The artisans who keep making things at their own expense, who pour their work and money into gifts to be given away so the pipe-hitting thug at the top can feel generous...  Those artisans are going to be burned out and sick and tired of the SCA a lot faster than if the same thugs offered their muscle and focus to make the gifties, only asking for some tutelage to make it happen.  

Does the SCA as a whole really not see how this expectation will ruin the experience for the very best crafters?  Or do they really want to drive away the 20% of the group who actually make and do 80% of the things that get made and done? Because those expectations of donated largesse are imposed obligations.  And will absolutely burn out the best people.  

AND THEN...

Today on Facebook, the princess put out another request.  Seems they gave away all the gifties and now want more.  Because they like to travel and take the nice things to other places to show off with.  As if they somehow deserve the credit for the skill and generosity of the people in Alaska who make these nice things.  

Not one word about remuneration.  No offer of putting in some effort of their own.  Just this:

"His Highness has returned from An Tir well-pleased with the generosity of His subjects, who have allowed Him to give largesse and enhance the reputation of all Oertha. Next week, Her Highness journeys to the far lands of Atlantia, and again your generosity will make her luggage heavier while her heart is happy and proud of Her subjects."

Yep, that's going to get me ready to hand over my work real fast.  Sure.  Good leadership, there.

Jouhikko Practice

 Keep in mind that I'm still very new.  My poor playing quality is not a reflection on my teacher!  

If you look around on YouTube, you will find a lot of people who play essentially the same instrument, but without the benefit of a teacher.  They saw those strings like they are sawing wood and they noodle 3 notes over and over.  And over.

And over.

And at first it sounds kind of cool!  Because that's a different instrument and a sound folks don't already know well.  But before long it gets really grating.  And then it turns into just a bunch of awful noise.  

That's the result of self teaching when folks have no clue about the musical potential on this instrument.  I know of no other instrument in the world that people will unbox and proudly upload a video of their first efforts, as if they are making music and want to share with the world.  

The other thing is that a disturbing number of people who do this are also playing instruments with extra-long scales and very low tuning.  They struggle to play notes in tune because the scale is so far outside the reach of a normal human hand.  But they are having fun, showing their stern faces, and imagining themselves as Vikings with instruments that don't have any evidence in a Viking context, so at least they are happy.

Find the really good players and you suddenly realize just how different they are from the "look at me with my new thing" crowd.  (And the good players don't have a bunch of runes and norse pagan symbols added to their instruments.  Just sayin.')

I intend to build a few more in the coming months.  I'll try to document a build and share it here.  In particular, I want to make one based on my interpretation of the bowed lyre in the carving at the cathedral in Trondheim.  It is dated to the early 14th century.  It isn't the oldest depiction of a bowed lyre, but is the oldest I've found that uses the small handhole, rather than a symmetrical yoke.  

New Passion - Jouhikko!

 I've actually wanted to play the jouhikko for a decade or so, but only recently actually got started learning.  I found a player on YouTube who is skilled, musical, and has a long history of playing the instrument and I contacted him to ask about lessons.  And he agreed to take me on as a student!  I've had 6 lessons so far and it is well worth getting the formal teaching.  We have to communicate over Skype and since he lives in Norway, our time zones are 10 hours different.  Which means I have a lesson at 10:30 pm and he's teaching me at 8:30 am the next day.  

Jouhikko is pronounced approximately as "YO-hee-ko."  The emphasis is strongly on the first syllable, not on the second, as most English speakers would be more comfortable with.

This instrument is a bowed lyre.  It has a gently arched bridge, so two strings are played at a time.  The center string is normally played as a drone.  Notes are played with the back of the fingers gently touching the horsehair strings.  The bow is tensioned with the fingers of the bowing hand.  

I made the body out of yellow birch, the soundboard out of cedar.  Overall length is about 25", the vibrating string length is 13.5" and the width is 5.5" because that is how wide the cedar was.  The bow is just some poplar I had in the shop.  The strings are twisted horsehair.  Next iteration will have sound holes a different shape from just round drilled holes, but I was playing with a lot of stuff on this one.  The size, the hand hole, the bridge design, the bow, and the tailpiece are all new efforts for me.  In the future, I will keep the size the same, but perhaps make the body a little nicer looking.  And I want to try a sound post under the bridge.  If I manage to get some wider soundboard material, I will try for a 6.5" wide instrument to get a bit more resonance out of the soundboard.

I make no claims about being any good with it, but I love playing it and I hope to eventually be able to consider the sounds I make musical.  I'll add a couple of videos of my (very beginner) playing once they are uploaded.  My connection is slow, so this can take a while.

Sloyd Knife Video

 Here we go!  If you don't see the video window, click this link: https://youtu.be/cPExoNYlvi4

Sloyd Knives

 If you look over my blog, you'll see that I carve spoons.  My primary tools are a hook knife and a sloyd knife.  Sloyd is a Swedish word for wood crafting.  Essentially, by saying "sloyd knife," I'm saying "wood working knife."  But it is fun to use a foreign word.  

I found out that a teacher and student teacher at my daughter's school are both spoon carvers, too.  Because I want to be extra supportive of teachers right now, I thought it would be good to give them each a new sloyd knife.  (I don't want to get into the whole concern about knives in schools.  There are no students in that school right now, so it isn't a big thing to leave a knife in a wrapped package.)

I made the handles of Alaska birch.  Blades are my usual repurposed spring steel.  It is a good steel and I've been very happy with how it performs in my blades so far.  

Here's a picture of the two knives just before I did the sharpening and stropping.  

As usual, my mark is the rune Wyn/Wunjo (depending on if you use the Anglo Saxon or the Norse name for it).  It looks like an angular P and it makes the sound of a W, so both my initials are there in one mark.  Sort of fun!

Video of the process is also on the way.  As with the blacksmith mini-seaxes, I chose to just make it a music video and play random tunes on my banjo.  If I ever get any feedback from my videos, I'll get some idea of what people like in my YouTube channel.  

Look for the video link tomorrow.