The Shed – September-October 2019

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an appropriate position for the tuning
pin in the frame at the right end. This
maintains the string’s position on the
bridge. Doing just a few of these I could
space the remaining ones easily. The
diameter of the hitch pin at^1 ¼ 16 inch gave
a set space between each string of a pair.
The string passed from the tuning pin
over the bridge, around the hitch pin,
and back to the next tuning pin. The
spacing for the tuning pins on the frame
worked out that two pairs could go side
by side for the lower, thicker strings. To
maintain the minimal horizontal angle
at bridge, nearer the upper end I had to
place three pairs.
To obtain a decent combination of
mass without too light tension, the lower
strings of many clavichords are ‘wound’
with a thin layer of material on top of
a core wire which can sustain a little
more tension. I found that the character
of brass at 20 thousandths although not
having much tension produced a decent
sound in my case and I graduated the
tension and diameter as described
earlier, transferring through 18- and 14-
to 12-thou phosphor bronze for the upper
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Ready to play

I then tuned my clavichord. It’s hard to

believe t hat I did it by ear f rom my single

tuning fork. There were no electronics

in those days!

As they need reasonable tension to

make a reasonable sound, the higher

(10-thou) strings needed care when

tuning to avoid breaking them.

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result — the quiet sound was no less

than I expected and I thought generally

quite good.

The instrument was portable and

stood on easily removable commercial

tapered legs which screwed into small

aluminium bases. I later changed these

for commercial small balusters which

looked marginally better, but the

instrument still had no case, so looked

a bit raw.

I could improve the appearance, make

the keys more attractive, and hide the

old pivot pin holes but not improve the

overhanging soundboard, which I felt was

not ideal. (I later saw other soundboards

which I thought looked awful; mine

wasn’t so bad after all.)

However, to get the result I wanted

would take a lot more time and the other

disadvantages made me disinclined

to spend more time making a case. So

although I had got the panel to do so,

I decided to capitalize on what I had

learned and start fully from scratch. It

would be much easier to make an ideal

keyboard with appropriately angled

keys and a nicely shaped soundboard

and bridge than try to adapt the many

disadvantages of old piano keys. Planks of

lime to make new keys were easily found

and could be cut out with my new jigsaw

at whatever design angle seemed best.

I could also design a nicely shaped

soundboard and bridge.

So I gave the clavichord to my musical

brother, who was polite about the sound

and even the appearance and didn’t seem

bothered that there was no case.

Meantime, I was already planning

version two.

The science of bars under

soundboards is still

somewhat debatable and

maybe bars shouldn’t be

attached to the bridge

After repair and refurbishment but prior

to re-stringing.