Acoustic Vulcan lyre

Step 7 Finishing

I had a few pieces of oak lying around, so I cut the tail piece and bridge from them. The tail piece (which I completely over engineered, smaller next time) was just a block of wood with a dozen small holes drilled through one way and three slightly larger holes through the top.

There are fancier ways to mount a tail peice, and I'm sure someone knows them. I am a novice wood worker, so I decided to go with drywall screws. Yeah, I know, there's no drywall in this thing, but I swear these things work on everything.

The bridge is just a chunk of oak cut to form. It's held in place by the tension of the strings, so you need to get them a little tuned then sort of work the bridge underneath them.

For strings I chose acoustic guitar G strings. The geometry of the lyre can give you a pretty good tonal range, depending on what strings you choose. Heavier strings will generally give you lower notes and vice versa. I tuned mine to a major twelve note scale, you can play a lot using only major scale notes, but if you want a different scale you can always retune it.

I found that once the strings were broken in they keep a tune remarkably well. The whole thing warped a little over time but seems pretty stable. For the record, I went on to build a few more of these, and they both looked a lot better, but I sold them and forgot to get pictures. Oh well.

Oh, a note on string labeling, I had a little trouble sorting out the strings at first so I used markers to color the C strings red and the F strings blue, a system that I totally stole from Irish harps, that also works REALLY well for Vulcan Lyres. The marker rubs off after a while but I don't have to reapply very often.

I hope this has helped and or inspired you to build something cool.

Comments

[markus2102]

where did u get the space suit???? XD great ible to thanks

[agent036]

I made the space suit, another one too based on an Apollo moon suit, they'll be in an instructable soon.

[garagegnome]

ridiculously COOL! I would make one as well, but I have a tin ear so it would be an endless C great work just the same!

[KingJaymz]

The picture of you and your wife is great! You guys are not just a lovely couple, but a very awesome couple, too. You're a lucky man. The harp is totally cool. I may have to make one of these. I love "out there" stuff like this. And the instructable was really well, written, too.

[agent036]

Actually, that woman is someone I randomly med at Balticon 42. Thanks for the comment though.

[Jake_C]

LOL