making lyre

[scopulus]

Hello all.

Part of my Ovate grade I came up with to build myself a historical lyre.
However, I surfed the net, but came up with alot of plans for the lyre of sutton hoo.. I still got a shitload of questions about this. For example what sort of wood should I take? etc... I am just starting to work in woodcrafting where I made a couple of spoons but I so want to create this for building up my Ovate Grade. Anyone here who is experienced , who could talk to me about wood, and more about lyre making? The model I really like to make is called lyre de paule

Blessings to all

[Lily]

this page (horrible layout, probably hasn't seen maintenance in years)
http://jfbradu.free.fr/celtes/decouvertes/paule.php3
says a recreation was made in alder and plum tree wood, according to pollen studies.

these days, instruments are often made of maple or pine wood, with the parts where the strings cross over from a hardwood (often tropical such as ebony...)

check out these two folks, they are here on the boards and might be able to help...
http://ancientmusic.co.uk/index.html

[scopulus]

Hello lily,

Thanks , the last link you made I had found. Who are they on this board? Might be I can contact them? It is soooo itching to start making this stuff.... and I lack experience, but you know how it goes when you want something really bad, no?

[Gwion]

From the posts I think they are "Corwen" and "Katie Bridgewater". I hope I haven’t got that wrong so please don’t PM them without double checking against the member list!

[scopulus]

Thank you Gwion.
I will check right away

[Corwen]

Hi Scopulus,

the Paule lyre would be the hardest to make. Firstly the statue is rather vague and poorly detailed which makes interpretation difficult. For instance does the instrument have a wooden or skin soundboard? Is it flat like the Germanic lyres or is the body bowl shaped? Does it have pegs for tuning or the older style friction levers? It is not possible to answer these questions with certainty from the statue. The dimensions would have to be inferred from the relative sizes of instrument and man in the statue, hard as the statue is fairly abstract. I would also look at Greek bowl lyres and the lyres on Celtic coins as these will help your interpretation if you wanted to try. I made a skin soundboard reconstruction with horsehair strings but wasn't really happy with it to be honest. Jean-Claude Condi's reconstruction which you can find on the web strikes me as 95% pure fantasy.

Germanic lyres are easier, there are many finds and manuscript illustrations. The dimensions are well established as is the playing technique, if not the tuning. Most are made from maple (both body and soundboard) with a couple being of oak which I wouldn't recommend. Some of the Eastern European (Gusli) and Scandinavian finds (Kravik lyre) are of softwood bodied lyres with hardwood soundboards. There are many luthiers suppliers who can sell you wood, guitar backs of maple are big enough for the soundboard of a smallish maple lyre and you may find a maple board to make the body at a hardwood timber merchant.

Tools are a matter of how much you want to spend and how quick you want to get it made. The minimum historical tools required would be a padsaw or some sort of piercing saw (though I suspect the originals were axed and adzed from a green board and tidied up with a knife and spokeshave), a spokeshave, a knife a cabinet scraper, some kind of drill and a gouge, and if possible vernier calipers but be warned it will take a long time to make something good and you will need to learn to sharpen your tools properly as you will need to do this many many times before it's finished... I presume the original makers roughed the instrument from a green piece of wood, waited for it to dry (whilst clamped flat in some way) and then finished it much as green woodworkers do today. You will probably have to work with seasoned wood though which is much much harder to carve and hollow by hand.

You would also need to get hold of a pegshaver and a peg reamer if making pegs not levers. These don't come cheap but you might find a friendly luthier who might lend them or make the pegs for you and help to fit them. Or you could cut down ready made violin pegs, the brown ones will look better than blackwood ones and you could cut the bit you turn down into a tapered truncated pyramid shape that could be turned with a matching wooden key. The pegs on my first instrument (a kantele for Kate, made many many years ago now) were made like this, before I had the right tools to make them myself. I used a cheap tapered file to make the holes conical, it wasn't perfect but it held its tuning. And for God's sake put the pegs in from behind not from in front like some reconstructions!

Using modern tools would be much much easier for your first instrument...

I also recommend you join the Anglo Saxon Lyres yahoo group as you will find all the information you are looking for there.

Hope that helps,

Corwen

[scopulus]

Dear Corwen,

I thank you. I will look up the group asap, and when more questions I will ask.
As you say, it might be I should look into anglo saxon way first, before going to paule lyre.. I need to think a few things first over. This hard when you never did some woodcarving before and only recently discovered how much fun (and pain and bloody) it can be! Thanks for the reply.

Blessings from the stones and oaks

[Jack Greenman]

Dear Corwen,

I thank you. I will look up the group asap, and when more questions I will ask.
As you say, it might be I should look into anglo saxon way first, before going to paule lyre.. I need to think a few things first over. This hard when you never did some woodcarving before and only recently discovered how much fun (and pain and bloody) it can be! Thanks for the reply.

Blessings from the stones and oaks

Scopulus,
I'm at much the same stage as you are, except that I've already obtained two maple boards, one thick (for the body) and one thin (for the belly) and marked the outlines on them. Now I need the time and resolve to start frasing that virgin wood!

I chose the Trossingen lyre as my model, because although it was buried with an Alamannic warrior in 580, it is almost perfectly preserved, and 1:1 drawings taken from the original are available on the Internet. So there's very little guesswork involved, and you can make something pretty authentic. Here's the German Wikipedia entry on it: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trossinger_Leier .In German, of course, but with photos showing the phenomenal state of preservation and the elegance of the design.

As Corwen said, the Yahoo Anglo Saxon Lyres group will provide you with all the information you need (and then some!)

I wish you every success!

Blessings,
Jack Greenman

[Skogsvandrare]

I'm also looking at a lyre as a project for the autumn. I will either make it from dry birch (plus somehting for the soundboard), green birch or even green aspen. Unless someone more experienced speaks up about my obvious insanity, delusions and/or incompentence, of course.

[Corwen]

I'm also looking at a lyre as a project for the autumn. I will either make it from dry birch (plus somehting for the soundboard), green birch or even green aspen. Unless someone more experienced speaks up about my obvious insanity, delusions and/or incompentence, of course.

Sounds good, dry birch is a good choice as its stable and isn't too hard to carve, though green birch will move a lot as it dries. Looks kind of like maple once it is finished. It is unusual to find birch planks large enough for a lyre, you have been very lucky to get some! One thing I would say is that birch here is quite soft, if you use pegs made from a harder wood they will wear the peg holes, so make sure you make your pegs from birch offcuts from the main lyre or something softer like willow or hazel. Might be different if the birch has grown slowly in a cold place.

I don't know much about aspen, isn't that what Americans call poplar? Poplar was often used for the bodies of keyboard instruments in the past being considered a good tonewood but difficult to get a good finish out of so generally kept out of sight. Aspen might be different, I don't know.

[Skogsvandrare]

I'm also looking at a lyre as a project for the autumn. I will either make it from dry birch (plus somehting for the soundboard), green birch or even green aspen. Unless someone more experienced speaks up about my obvious insanity, delusions and/or incompentence, of course.

Sounds good, dry birch is a good choice as its stable and isn't too hard to carve, though green birch will move a lot as it dries. Looks kind of like maple once it is finished. It is unusual to find birch planks large enough for a lyre, you have been very lucky to get some! One thing I would say is that birch here is quite soft, if you use pegs made from a harder wood they will wear the peg holes, so make sure you make your pegs from birch offcuts from the main lyre or something softer like willow or hazel. Might be different if the birch has grown slowly in a cold place.

We have some fairly slow grown birch up here (middle of Sweden), even if the idiots that run the Swedish lumber industry wants both kinds of trees: spruce *and* pine. Fast grown instant pulp. I have an old board that I think I can get a lyre out of, but it is quite hard. The primary plan is to carve it green (and cut the shape) and dry slowly in a box of shavings, and then plane the front back to flatness. Should be doable, I hope.

Good tip for the pegs. Thanks!

I don't know much about aspen, isn't that what Americans call poplar? Poplar was often used for the bodies of keyboard instruments in the past being considered a good tonewood but difficult to get a good finish out of so generally kept out of sight. Aspen might be different, I don't know.

Populus tremula. Quite soft compared to some, will dull tools, but is stronger than people think. And butter soft (ok, cheese soft) to carve when green, but harder when dry.

[Corwen]

double post...

[Corwen]

Slow grown birch sounds good. If the board is green think about clamping it strongly to a thick piece of stable timber, I have seen carved boards warp amazingly as they dry and lose moisture from the carved out side, and you don't want a lyre shaped like a banana!

Here is the last lyre I made, for the Ringve musical instrument museum in Norway. It is strung with nylgut (fake gut, sounds more like gut than normal nylon) as it is intended for children to try, and nylgut is tough! The instrument itself is entirely maple, stained with a dye made from walnut husks.

[Jack Greenman]

Here is the last lyre I made, for the Ringve musical instrument museum in Norway.

Corwen,

Nice piece of work - obviously a Trossingen replica, even down to the sound-holes! This is what I'm working on at the moment.

One thing puzzles me, though. In the photo, the outer strings appear to run over the edges of the arms, rather than over the hand-hole. Does this not make it difficult to damp those strings? Photos and drawings of the original Trossingen lyre show the outer pegs well within the width of the hand-hole, i.e. their strings would be easily accessible for damping from behind. Was there some other reason for your modification?

Blessings,
Jack Greenman

[Corwen]

Its a bit of an optical illusion, the strings are over the hole rather than the arms until quite near the top, so it is possible to damp them until 3/4s the way up. They are spread wider than the pegs on the original though, making tuning the strings easier by hand without having to use a key to turn the pegs. I don't always make them like this, but mine is made like this so I can tune easily as I play.

I tend to play with my hand low in the hand hole where it is easy to reach the octave and fifth harmonics so the strings being nearer the arms at the top aren't a problem, and the client wanted a lyre like mine, having seen a photo. Playing like this means that by spreading my hand wide I can wedge my damping hand in the hand hole, thus I can hold the lyre without needing a strap around my wrist, making it easier to pick it up and play without fiddling with a strap. I know this isn't authentic for the Trossingen lyre, but since the lyre wasn't always played with a strap, and some of the finds show quite spread out pegs, I feel relatively justified in modifying the instrument a little to make it easier to use in the schools workshops we do!

You can see what I mean on this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... 1f29rtaRYk

[Jack Greenman]

I know this isn't authentic for the Trossingen lyre, but since the lyre wasn't always played with a strap, and some of the finds show quite spread out pegs, I feel relatively justified in modifying the instrument a little to make it easier to use in the schools workshops we do!

You can see what I mean on this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... 1f29rtaRYk

Corwen,
Thanks, that's very informative.

I've seen this YouTube video before - it's one of the ones I came across while gathering initial info for my lyre project. Nice to meet you "in person," so to speak!

Blessings,
Jack Greenman

[scopulus]

Lots of information flowing around here. Interesint ideas ;-)
Time will indicate when I can start with this project. Wood and tools is what I need to gather now (and trying to figure out the measurements into cm/dm ;, etc

Thanks all!