Having covered my various sources of inspiration, a discussion of design will now make sense.
My initial plan was to build a single three-string jouhikko inspired by the Sutton Hoo lyre. This would make for a simple, rectangular body with rounded corners and minimal deviation from the instrument I already had.
Recreations aside, my other goals for the project were twofold. One was to carve the body from a single piece. There are two ways of building a lyre; the more modern way is to assemble it from individual pieces, as one would a guitar or violin. Single-piece carving is the traditional way, which appears borne out on the Anglo-Saxon model lyres as well. Having tried instruments built both ways at the coffee shop, I was more taken with the unibody sound. My other goal was an arched back. That one goes back to playing the Irish bouzouki as a teenager. Having played the standard guitar-construction Trinity Hall model, then tried an arch-top, the difference in sound was monumental. An soundbox with parallel sides can create standing waves inside it, where some of the sound bounces back on itself and cancels itself out. This is definitely not a feature of the original lyres, which were rather flat and would fit comfortably inside of a modern 2x10, but the depth of an instrument isn't terribly obvious while it's being pointed at the listener.
I would also be including violin-type internal bracing - a soundpost and bass bar. The soundpost goes near the treble side of the bridge to support the face and bridge, while the bass bar passes directly under the bass side at a slight angle to the face grain. This stiffens the soundboard, strengthening it and helping it transmit long-wavelength bass vibrations well.
This is my initial plan that I drew up, drawn to scale of 1 square = 1/2". Most measurements were copied from my existing instrument, with radii and such determined by scientific eyeball. This plan includes a faceted back that I hoped would be feasible to carve out. There's also the matter of the yoke.
The Sutton Hoo lyre had joinery halfway down the arms. This is outside of my projected capabilities for good joinery, so I opted for a tongue and groove joint directly on the yoke.
My early aspirations for building a lyre included a turned button, but considering that I don't have easy access to a lathe, that would be impractical. Instead, I included a hook carved into the end like the Trossingen lyre. This doesn't involve using any processes I wouldn't already be doing.
On Patrick's advice, I made a physical mockup to see how it feels in my hand. The usual idea would be to use cardboard, but since I didn't have cardboard handy, I grabbed a sheet of pink foam. This let me also check dimensions on the depth of the arms, since it was an inch thick.
The rubber met the road about a month before W-AT War, when Patrick invited me for a shop day which would be a couple of weeks before. This was in conjunction with me having the idea to actually make a Trossingen-inspired lyre, and Patrick encouraging me to make two lyres, one of would be four strings.
With some direct inquiries into what tools would be available, I had to work fast reworking my plans and getting materials together.
On the materials side, my laurel offered me a spare set of spruce soundboards and a peg reamer and shaper. The good wood store sold 8/4 maple, which could be in 6x2" widths reliably. On the plus side, the maple is reasonably priced, on the other, I had to buy the whole ten foot board. So, that was two jouhikkos, a section to break out on the table saw, and a four-foot piece for an eventual tagelharpa cello. I also got exceedingly lucky in that for a mere $40, there was an unmilled three-foot mahogany board which was two and a half inches thick by eight wide. This would be enough to make the four-string instrument.
Maple is considered the ideal tonewood, its hardness making it good at clear treble. Mahogany is a first aesthetic choice, and a second acoustic choice, making darker-sounding instruments in general. This should work out well for a four-string instrument, perfectly engineered for outputting Sad Viking music.
Now I had to sort out what the final shapes of my instruments would be. Remember that nice scale drawing? Throw that out. Well, maybe not throw it out entirely, a lot of the lengthwise landmarks are still useful, but it's not seeing the light of day entirely as written.
My decision finalized with a three-string Trossingen jouhikko and a four-string Sutton Hoo tagelharpa. The latter is simple, as it basically involved adding an inch to the width of the instrument to add room for an extra string. The Trossingen design involves some careful consideration.
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| The original Trossingen lyre, for reference |
The original lyre has a round bottom, a contoured yoke, and more importantly, trapezoidal arms and a narrow box. Given that jouhikkos are some variant of rectangular, I was on my own to invent what this would be. Keeping all the relative lengths together was a given - altering those would change a lot of things in ways I couldn't predict easily. This would mean the proportions would be radically different than the original, much like the Sutton Hoo version. But I could still evoke what I wanted by keeping the yoke its original width and narrowing the soundbox. The question was by how much.
I measured the angle at which my strings fanned out and determined that the strings drew closer together by half an inch between the peg and the body. The starting distance between the string and the inside of the right arm gives the room you need to put your fingers through the back of the instrument and work the strings. Too much distance here isn't the end of the world, but it can make it harder to reach the middle string. Too little, and you can't avoid brushing the string with your fingers on accident.
On a normal jouhikko, the arms are straight, but the strings converge towards the bridge. This moves the string away from you as you try to play in higher positions, with the arm supported by your hand. By narrowing my soundbox 1/2" per side according to my measurement, not only would I get the look I was after, I would keep my melody string parallel to the arm as far as I could reach, thus making playing in higher positions more consistent.
It was around this point, considering how much time I would have to actually get my instruments as far along as possible, I abandoned my original arched back idea. That would be a royal pain no matter how I did it, and using unfamiliar tools, I would have an excellent probability of messing up. I then realized a feature I had seen on other lyres and now figured out its purpose - a simple thickness taper from the butt to the shoulder. This keeps the two faces of the instrument out of parallel and does much the same job. A quarter inch taper should be plenty.
I drew up a pair of posterboard templates to trace onto my wood, and after some foam mockups, settled on my plans.
With the wood blocks shortened to fit in my luggage, the patterns traced, and my bag carefully weighed for 50 lb of supplies, it was time to carve.
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