little old qin maker

yuguzhai qinpu - what's wrong with it?

2011-12-07T09:38:00.001-08:00

The yuguzhai and its author Zhu Fengjie are a bit of a mystery. Probably the yuguzhai is a secret handbook in the "kongfu" sense - a few copies were made (not very many out there apparently) and given away to friends and students. (I'm talking about the Yuguzhai itself and not its bastard stepson Qinxuerumen). The section on qin-making does not necessarily represent a good approach or the common approach at the time. It is possible that Zhu Fengjie did not build qin but had someone do it for him. Here are a few grains of salt to keep in mind:

The section on string making as pointed out by Huang Shuzhi aka Wong Shuchee is wrong in the counts for "threads". Apparently the counts in the book itself are based on the cycle of 5th. In reality they are more of of a linear decrease from big to small.
The section on making the curvature of the top gives a method that is I suspect too simple. The resulting top is more or less flat with curved sides. I am referring to the use of the "forms", drilling down, and getting rid of the drilled sections on the side. Zeng Chengwei just uses a plane and makes the wood chips fly. I draw a circular form on the end (the nut side) and use a very big plane and a long meterstick to make sure I am doing things "straight". In general the top should have more of a curve.
It doesn't mention (I believe) the necessary concave curve (see this blog) on the top.
The bottom board seems to be too thick and is never hollowed out in the real world. You might do this though if you can't find a top board (on the order of 1 1/2 inches) that is thick enough.
The lacquering section is over-simplified but on the other hand lacquering is non-trivial and takes a great deal of time and patience.
Keep in mind the book is talking about building qin in S. China courtesy of 1850 or so. Modern methods may vary (including finding wood ...)

2011-12-07T08:53:00.001-08:00

Small update. Been sick for quite awhile. Maybe getting better. The spruce/maple qin sounds good. I'm working on finishing the lacquering of the sides. Wood is chosen for two more. opinion: use the best "local" wood you can find. And not to worry too much about wood as used in China. It also makes a lot of sense to use woods used in guitars, violin, cello, etc. in the US and Europe assuming you are in the US and Europe. This all depends on what you can find of course. Hunting for wood is an art in and of itself. Possible top materials include: spruce, western red cedar, redwood, maybe pine. Possible bottoms might include walnut, maple, mahogany. I'm not thrilled in general with catalpa as a bottom or as a material for providing resonance. Easier to find on the east coast of the US anyway but not on the west coast. I'm going to make a paulownia/maple qin and a cedar/walnut qin for my next outings and try and build my woodcrafting skill set a bit. Eventually I want to do redwood/mahogany. One other opinion is while I am hardly against using traditional lacquer - I am not thrilled about hiding beautiful wood and personally intend to use some form of "lacquer" that shows the grain.

epoxy from rotdoctor is advised for "naked qin"

2011-06-21T18:20:00.000-07:00

http://www.rotdoctor.com/products/landl.html

epoxy as a lacquer substitute?

2011-05-08T19:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.resinresearch.net/

Is the answer. Or a possible answer. What is the question? The question is: what might we use in the US or "west" as opposed to traditional Asian lacquer from the tree or cashew lacquer which apparently is not available any more from Japan. Acc. to a friend who is a luthier of the bass making kind - especially fretless bass - the answer is some form of epoxy. Especially if it is engineered to be a bit tough in terms of UV radiation. A clear epoxy in particular is something to think about. So perhaps your guqin can double as a surfboard?

recent work on the spruce/maple qin

2011-04-10T16:42:00.000-07:00

The spruce/maple qin is further along. At this point I have taken wood twice out of the insides and will probably do a bit more. It is not glued together yet. Sides are not done. It is held together by the strings more or less and some invisible doweling. The point now is to play it some and decide where or if more wood should be removed from the top. The tone is very clear. As usual open strings and harmonics sound good. The action overall is good. However one must remove the "correct" amount of wood. I have a hunch that is made trickier by the spruce top since spruce is said to open up slowly and needs a lot of play-in. I have been wondering where the wood came from actually and there is no way to tell. The spruce may have come from B.C. or Alaska probably. It is very nice to be able to see the grain.

various articles on strings/silk string making/history

2010-10-10T09:18:00.000-07:00

1. Huang Shuzhi article on silk strings/history of string making/aesthetics

Huang Shuzhi

2. Raykov article on silk string making

Raykov

3. revised yuguzhai article silk string making chapter --
post discussion with Huang Shuzhi:

Yuguzhai

4. Chen Gongliang on silk strings/history.
Chen Gongliang

5. Xiamen - Xiamen site selling new form of qin string (nylon
wrapping on multi-strand nylon core)

clear (ish) lacquer from Japan

2010-10-09T10:45:00.000-07:00

The picture shows top/bottom of a qin I am currently (slowly as usual) working on. The picture was made by my friend E. Tulp from NL who is a very good photographer. It shows the top board made from spruce and the bottom board made from maple. This is the result of about 10 coats of the see-thru "cashew" lacquer from Japan. Mr. S. D. advised 10 coats. The next step is to put in the hui above and carve a couple of characters below after which I will sand/polish the lacquer and put on strings and play a bit to decide if I have taken enough wood out of the top.
I wish to proceed slowly in the decision making. It is said that spruce takes a while to open up
and that should factor into the decision. The wood here is nothing fancy but it is a very interesting experiment to try and reveal the grain.

Danny W's pictures of his own qin making adventures

2010-10-07T10:52:00.000-07:00

http://www.montriwongworawat.com/albums/projects/guqinconstruction/

Note pictures of a peg making jig in here which is what I basically did.

first attempt at making qin pegs (and rongkou cords)

2010-10-07T08:12:00.000-07:00

So this is the first time I have ever tried to make zhen/pegs. Not all that easy. Thanks to Danny W. and my nephew Cameron for assistance. My tools include a lathe (Cameron made a smaller tool rest for me which means metal working) and a drill press as well as sandpaper as a major item. Basically there are two stages: 1. making a jig for drilling holes and drilling the holes in the stock and 2. turning the wood.

I purchased 1/2 inch round hardwood dowels at Woodcrafters (mahogany above) and cut it into 3 inch lengths leaving 1/2 inch on each end for destruction in lathe and/or drill press and/or jig. So basically the peg is 2 inches long.

The jig was the hardest part. The right idea (thanks to Danny) is that you drill the small hole first and use it as a pilot hole for a 1/2 inch hole (not the other way around - as trying to center the pilot hole is hell and I never succeeded that way). The jig basically takes a blank in one end and the other end is using for drilling "all the way" through the blank. Except that doesn't work either. You have to take the blank out and turn it around. Soap is helpful as is a pair of pliers.
Once done with that you turn it. And sand it. Etc. I don't have a drilling/chuck with the lathe which might be helpful. I made 11 and had the wife choose the best 7. Hopefully the next attempt will not be so rough. I hope to make a set out of cherry in the future.

violin fingerboard - concave shape

2009-10-19T17:04:00.000-07:00

My friend and former theory teacher, Chris Bonds, sent me this picture. Chris is a violinist. The picture shows a violin fingerboard with a ruler on it. There is a bright light behind it. Note the light under the ruler. You can clearly see that the fingerboard is a bit concave underneath the ruler. Chris says it is on the order of about 1/16th of an inch maximum.

qin jig - for sanding, lacquering the sides

2009-10-10T10:51:00.000-07:00

I've modified this jig since I took these pictures. Easy to make. I gave it a bigger
base (and built the jig out of only gorilla glue since appearance is irrelevant and gorilla glue is a tad less trouble than screws). So basically you have two boards that
are more or less length-wise about 2
feet long and say 6 inches high and a base that is that same length but perhaps wider
than above. I have recently glued on a bigger base so that clamps can be used with this
to hold the base secure. But one could just do it right in the first place and make it
out of three pieces of scrap lumber. Make sure the boards are smooth -- so as not
to damage the qin wood.

So one puts the qin in sideway to work on the sides. That's the
main point. Sanding, planing, lacquering, whatever. It's very useful. I even use it
as a headstop for planing the top sometimes although I'm more likely to use the traditional
bench dogs of various forms for that activity.

the qin top - slightly concave.

2009-10-10T09:23:00.000-07:00

与古斋不语：

Note well: a guqin top board needs to have a concave curve in it. According to Master Wu (Wu Ziying) starting about hui 5 or so and going above hui 12. This is especially important for the lower strings I think given that they have a bigger
density.

S.D. sez: silk strings likely to vibrate more. So ironically the user of
silk strings might need to have a bigger curve on the qin top. I think making it
work for silk strings is a necessity but never mind. the point is that the string
does go up and down (as well as side to side but never mind about that). There
needs to be a "just so" angle between a pressed string and the bridge especially
say on hui 12 (wai), string 1 (worst case) or if we claim a given string is DO, then
assume RE is the test position.

Take a good qin and a meter ruler or yardstick with a good straight edge. Put the yardstick along the line of the first string. The yardstick should rest at the ends somewhere between hui 5 and in the vicinity of the nut and hui 12 - actually slightly above the major 2nd position between hui 12 and the nut. There should be a visible gap between the top and the ruler. How big? I don't know really. With the best qin I own I see something approaching 1-2 millimeters with string 1. The most concave spot is say around hui 8 or perhaps between hui 7 and 8. It needs to gradually become less concave up to the major 2nd if you consider the string itself to be the tonic (the 12 wai position more or less in terms of qin tablature).

Note that a poor job of this can cause buzzing although said buzzing will appear most likely on the lower strings around the upper hui. The solution is drastic: redo the top. A bad qin with a bridge too high ironically might get away with not doing this at all I think. This would not be the same as a buzz caused by a high point in the qin string path.

How to do it: I think Steve's advice about this is good. Let's say you have planed the top so that you have the side to side curve and the curve from the shoulder going down to the bridge down and you are happy with it. That's two curves. You need one more.

I would put the strings on at this point before any deer-horn powder/lacquer or anything. This stage is crude. You don't want to play very much -- as you
can damage the top. However at this point you should make sure that buzzes caused by "bumps" in the wood are gone (string path is flat) and put the concave curve in too. The curve can be done with rough sandpaper slowly with a smaller sized block, or a scraper (which I view as a rough sandpaper equivalent or a very fine plane)
or probably if you are Wang Peng, you simply look sternly at the qin and it reshapes its wood without you doing anything much because it is afraid of you. A master carpenter can probably do this with a plane but I'm too chicken for that.

Slow.

Take your time. You have done a lot of hard work so no use ruining the top now.
The Yuguzhai has a great piece of advice though about all this. Don't be afraid to put the strings on and take them off. Get used to it. I use a 3 foot metal ruler to check as you can certainly see the gap, although it really isn't very big. The strings though are the ultimate test.
You put them on and check for buzzes at various notes and do a little sliding between them. The point is do this in the wood, and then put on tai, lacquer etc. Otherwise you get to take off all that hard lacquer work and do it over again after fixing the wood. And after various lacquer layers and smoothing etc. with stone or wet sandpaper or whatever, you restring and check
again. and again. and again.

Note that this is one more possible cause of buzzing of which there are so very many; e.g.,

1. top is not flat in front of the buzz point
2. top is not concave enough
3. bridge too low
4. string knot is managing to buzz on the bridge
5. something wrong with "rong kou" yarn fastener and bridge knot
6. bridge is not curved enough from front to back
7. buzz is at nut because nut is not curved enough or some other
nut problem.
8. something funky going on where qin strings tie to geese feet
9. you put on a machine tuner on the bottom and ironically it's the thing
causing the buzz

Probably 14 more possible reasons for buzzes. This is what happens when
you have a fingerboard that is 4 feet long. ...

I did a little odd research this summer about the length of acoustic strings on various instruments. The theorbo's bass fingerboard is about the only thing out there in the Western music world that has strings anywhere near as long as qin strings. Although for better or worse it seems that you actually can buy theorbo strings in Portland at several places.

Hah. Gosh. No qin string shops though. Darn.

acc. to Master Dydo - 2 Wang Peng qin-making videos

2009-10-10T09:21:00.000-07:00

All unfretted stringed instruments need a slight concavity. Silk is usually a bit lower tension than steel on a qin, so the concavity is a bit more. If you take a straight-edge to a violin (high tension strings, short string length) you will see a pronounced concavity. You can see in the Wang Peng qin-building video that he is putting in a good bit of it from the beginning. See http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/dskiDVw7FLw/ and http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/bQ2JYU5D1vQ/ . So you don’t have to ask him! The area of maximum concavity is the area of maximum possible vibration (fattest wave): hui 7.

lacquer article in Chinese from Taiwan

2009-07-14T09:34:00.000-07:00

http://erhu.org/drupal/node/327

qin top woods in China

2009-06-25T09:03:00.000-07:00

Referring to lumber used for the top of the qin in China, there are 3 kinds
that seem to come up a lot: 1. wutong 梧桐, 2. shanmu 杉, and 3. baitong 白桐.
This is not to say that other kinds of woods cannot be used. Pine, cedar, spruce
are all possibilities. But there are the three kinds most often used in China.

wutong:

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmiana_simplex

known as Firmiana simplex (scientific name) and Chinese parasol tree (English).
There are other scientific names.

shanmu:

Evert Koster found this as "shan mu". This makes sense to me:
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cunninghamia.

So basically "Chinese fir"and Cunninghamia. Not a fir though -- more like cypress. The web page says "used in temples" !!!

bai tong:

English name is "paulownia" or paulownia tomentosa to be more specific.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulownia

The wood is very light and white in color more or less. This
wood is known in Japanese as "kiri" and has been used in furniture -- tansu-making.

the router railroad - a qin jig

2009-05-20T20:32:00.000-07:00

The following pics more or less show a so-called "jig" which is above
average I suspect in complexity. Basically one has a couple of rails
and a carriage on which a router rides. This is basically a wood version
of a milling table (or could be viewed as a C&C machine lacking a computer!).
The first pic shows a small Bosch hand-held router (laminate router) sitting
in the carriage. Various clamps are used to hold the router in place. The bit
is extended manually (it's a narrow long straight bit). The next picture

shows the two rails with a qin top in them. This is a posed picture. In reality, the qin top needs to be braced so it won't move. The third picture is a closeup of the carriage with the router in it.

The last picture shows the nut end of the qin top and shows the various
routed out gradations in the top. The basic idea for the jig is to save
time as opposed to routing out the top "perfectly". Of course it can be used for other things and I will use it to route out some of the wood inside the qin top. In both cases, one will resort to manual tools (planes or chisels) to finish the job.

The rails and "ties" were made of mahogany. It probably would have made more sense to just use a piece of MDF for the base and *draw lines* for the rails. But for some reason I couldn't make it that simple. The mahogany was scrap from a previous table project. It would be nice to figure out some more clever means of holding the router in the carriage. It needs to be clamped. There is no doubt about that. Possibly a couple of metal rails could be used to somehow do that. But I am a woodworker and not a metal worker.

白桐 aka paulownia update

2009-05-20T20:27:00.000-07:00

So the stick of last winter has acquired leaves and is in its third year. So far this year it has gone from perhaps 5 feet to 7 feet tall. The hard winter (surprising for Portland) didn't kill it. It's a Paulownia tree that arrived in Portland OR from somewhere in Florida. Poor thing was mailed in a tiny box.

adventures in qin debug

2009-05-09T08:54:00.000-07:00

So I had some adventures the last few months debugging the black real lacquer qin and the red cashew cedar qin. The goal of course was to string them and get them playable. This led to many fine moments of self-doubt and muttered imprecations. There is certainly a stage called "string debug" in qin-making. Let us first go with a stage/stage, blow by blow for each qin:

black-lacquer qin

start with hybrid string on position #6 (wanted 1/6 on first to hold tuner). GAAAA! terrible wierd noises around upper hui position 4-5. I decided something horrible is wrong and panic.

try putting on silk strings just to be totally different. string 6 first -- works ok. hmmm... finish the job.

ok, now we have a different problem. basically bridge buzzes at positions 1-3. Ponder this a long time and eventually come to realize that I should try the hybrid strings again.

back to hybrid strings. use a different string 6 this time. everything works ok... sigh.

lessons:

1. you may have a bad string. that's what happened with string 6. it was a bit unwrapped.
2. the problem with silk strings was that the bridge is too low. More tension on the hybrid strings makes this work. ( I screwed that qin up -- see previous blogs). As a rule of thumb it may be fare to say, a higher bridge may work with silk, but if too low, maybe not.
You shouldn't have rattles at the bridge. Sometimes this can be dealt with by moving the "yingtou" (knot) away from the inner playing edge of the bridge towards the back, but in this case the problem was actually endemic. This was because all the low-tension strings had
the same problem so one couldn't blame it on the knot position on top of the bridge.

There was basically no surface buzzing with this qin perhaps because the action is too high anyway. I also think the superb flow qualities of real lacquer has something to do with this.

red cedar qin

So when I first put strings on we had major buzzes on strings 1-4 around and above hui 10.
There was an occasional buzz from the bridge too. Note that said buzzes did exist when the qin was strung during the "base" (tai) phase. They were new. The bridge buzzes were all dealt with uniformly by making sure the knot was well positioned "inboard" on the bridge (move towards rungkou). There was some stone smoothing needed especially for string 1. However a great deal of the buzziness simply comes from the fact that you have new hybrid strings. They aren't straight (yet). I can't remember that silk strings ever do something like this. I did decide one of the strings was screwed up and replaced it and that got rid of some buzzes as well.

The big lesson is that it might be the strings. Of course buzzes can come from:

1. the bridge
2. the nut
3. the underside where the strings are wrapped or fastened somehow
4. a surface that isn't flat enough
5. a string that has a bump in it
6. a string that is coming unwrapped
7. fundamental flaw in the 3-d geometry of the bridge and top (black lacquer qin qualifies here)
8. something else not in this list

lacquer - namikawa-ltd.co.jp

2009-05-09T08:40:00.000-07:00

http://www.namikawa-ltd.co.jp/cgi-bin/item_e.cgi?cate=14&no=3

Namikawa-ltd.co is someone I have done business with in the past. They now have a web page that allows one to buy both cashew and "real" urushi lacquer. The interesting thing is that they have several colors of real lacquer including purple. They also sell raw urushi lacquer as well as a base for cashew that is the rough equivalent of deer horn powder + raw lacquer.

For buying on the web, I just tried to buy from them and discovered a bug in their web setup. Basically if you try to put something in the cart from the English version -- that didn't work. I found that if I first used Japanese and then switched over to English, that allowed the whole thing to work. Hopefully they will get that fixed.

A certain party asked me about brown lacquer. The thing is that in general as far as I know (and I reserve the right to be wrong), "brown" is often a natural raw color more or less. One can probably get brown by doing what the Yuguzhai says in the "Bringing out the Shine" section, by thinning the lacquer a bit courtesy of heat or sun. Although for the life of me I am going to have to do some resesarch on "pig-bile". I also would like to know what is meant by "oil-paper", although I suspect this is just paper soaked in oil put on the top of open lacquer to prevent it from drying out.

shocking in red - cedar qin

2008-12-16T18:30:00.001-08:00

Red cashew. The top board is the right thickness (say 1.5 inches) and the bottom is on the order of .5 inches.

The top is 200-year old growth cedar. The bottom is alder of a good quality. These are reasonable choices as it turns out. (The cat however was not interested in playing and took a nap).

No, it is not done yet. It needs more coats on the sides and then we get to the "fun" part of sanding/smoothing.

A couple of points. Mr. Dydo was right about the cashew. Putting it on with a brush is the way to go. I have a 1200 cfm ceiling fan for ventilation and SHOULD ALWAYS wear a respirator anyway. Note to self and anybody else using cashew. It is bad for your lungs. Don't breath it.

I am more or less imitating Wang Peng's acoustic design on the inside. Thicker at string 1 and thinner at string 7. skinny sides too (1/4 inch) on the inside. There may be side cracks at some point but we'll have to see how that experiment plays out. I also took some wood out of the bottom along the sides in a channel in an attempt to improve the overall reverberation.

One improvement over previous efforts. Basically I just took Zeng's rough top shape at the nut and planed it off to that measurement manually. No drill hole forms. The action at this point
(before all the red with just "tai" base on) was pretty good.

Another point about putting on cashew (and real lacquer for that matter). Drips are a pain.
With cashew they may not dry in a timely manner. You have to sand them off or scrape them or something. I also think cashew is best mixed with either the Japan suggested solvent or mineral spirits, but avoid turpentine.

One more small point. I have found that 800 grade sandpaper works well with cashew to smooth it relatively fast. After that one can use 1000 grade to shine it up and perhaps
rotten stone (with oil) after that for an extra shine.

mistakes and successes for real lacquer qin

2008-12-16T18:13:00.000-08:00

There are too many mistakes to mention I suspect. Let's try for the worst ones:

1. The top was too thin to begin with on the order of 1.25 inches. 1.5 inches is better. Trying to make a smaller curvature work is a pain in the tuchus.
2. One should have wood that reflects sound for the bottom. I suspect traditional catalpa is good at this, and other woods in that category probably include alder, and traditional guitar bottom woods like maple and mahogany. Poplar was used here but my main goal with this qin was to learn how to use traditional lacquer. That probably counts more/less as a success. Poplar is useable but best avoided I think.
3. BIG mistake: somehow I screwed the curvature up around the bridge due to assuming the top was flat when I had not yet glued it down and strung it. It was actually bowed up because of the string pressure on the unglued top. When I finally glued it and restrung it, I discovered to my horror that the top area at the "shoulder" was too high. This means the bridge is not high enough, etc. etc. Playable but maybe not for BIG HANDS and FAT FINGERS.

successes: the lacquer work was ok for the most part. slow. patience is a virtue (not my virtue, but one has no choice in this matter). I did get the lacquer on and polished. I use a big cedar box as a drying cabinet with pans of water in it. One must be careful with the humidity and the temperature. I suspect "too hot" is bad. Too cold might be dealt with by a hot water bottle (didn't try it). I used a cheap humidity gauge in the box -- typically around 90%. Some wrinkling a few times, but at this point in general I suspect wrinkling happens because the lacquer is too thick. Turpentine works fine for thinning. Say roughly 50/50. Probably at least 10 coats. As always the corners are a problem and probably trying to get extra coats on the corners is always necessary. By "corners" I mean e.g., where the top meets the side. For the most part I used 1000 grade sand paper and/or 800 grade smoothing stones (on the top playing surface). I used a mouse with a polishing pad, oil, and rottenstone for a final polish, which was fast and worked well. Lacquer was put on with an expensive Japanese lacquer brush. I would like to figure something else out for that though that is cheaper as I have a regrettable tendency to kill brushes by not getting them clean enough.
It may be that cleaning with mineral spirits might be a better idea.

the dao of real lacquer is this: many thin coats else you shall be punished with wrinkly "skin".

I don't seem to be allergic much to lacquer at this point if at all. It doesn't have much in the way of fumes either (the turpentine is what smells). Unlike with something more like western lacquer (cashew is like western lacquer in this respect), ventilation doesn't hurt, but you don't need to wear a respirator (at least I don't).

Real lacquer qin is done - finally

2008-12-16T18:06:00.000-08:00

It only took two-three years to get it done. Real "qi" lacquer (from Japan) is a bear. Hard to say how many coats. Many. This qin was last played when I lived at Trillium Hollow and Master Wu and Pat Wong from SF came over to have a Yaji. That has been a while. It looks pretty good at the moment. I have to string it and find out how the sound is. It was "ok" that long ago. I am going to attempt a list of mistakes in the next blog entry. This qin is made of paulownia from the top (from Maryland I believe) and poplar for the bottom. Poplar is one of the mistakes, although it probably barely qualifies for a reasonable bottom. Fancy red wood for the "peg protectors" and rosewood elsewhere for bridge, cheng-lu, nut and cap pieces.

A Young Paulownia (2 years old) Dreams of Spring

2008-12-16T18:01:00.000-08:00

machine tuners.

2008-04-20T22:00:00.000-07:00

four pictures of "shang xuan ji" 上线机. In general such a device is for gross tuning with so-called "metal" strings (nylon wrapped around a metal core).

The first one from top to bottom represents an intermediate attempt (not the latest design) made by me. Basically a piece of maple, with a bar for the "wild duck feet" made out of ebony. I tried to color the maple with a stain and as is apparently common with maple, it ended up blotchy. It is apparently better to dye it first and then color it. Tuning pegs are removed and are not shown, but one can use hammer dulcimer or piano "zither pins". The holes in the pins have to be made bigger though and one needs to be very careful about making sure the new bigger holes are smooth at the edges, else the strings may be damaged. Zither pins from China are apparently taken from guzheng zithers.

The second tuner is from China and is very recent. It was very well made (some are and some are not). It has a definite pro in that it does not cover up the small sound hole (phoenix pond), although the small sound hole is less important in terms of overall effect on the acoustics of the qin as a box. (Evert Koster takes a bow here). Although I possess a similar tuner that uses the ordinary zither pins, this one has nuts as opposed to pins and is thus rather interesting as a result. One can see that these things are undergoing experimentation. However the downside of this design is indeed that you need a wrench (although presumably a metric wrench and not that hard to find) as opposed to the normal zither pin wrench (also not that hard to find).

The third machine is my latest design. Although hard to see, there are two cross pieces of ebony. One of course is the bar for holding the tuner to the posts, and the other one is just big enough to raise the tuner a bit off of the phoenix pond. The two maple pieces (maple is a very good wood for holding zither pins for some reason) were cut in such a way so that like the previous machine made in China, the phoenix pond is not blocked much. I put a little "shellac" on it and called it a day. The real mystery component in this design is the newish Gorilla glue superglue that could apparently glue an elephant to a rhino (don't do it -- probably piss them off). If it fails, I will have to screw it all together. This actually was a design. I even have a written template for it. Shocking.

Forth and last we have a very poor effort. It works but there is a design mistake here worthy of note. Basically having a "cord" of some sort that hangs over the wild duck feet makes it difficult to actually tune the strings when the strings are first put on. The problem is that the machine will not be held steady and will move up one way or the other depending on the next string being added to the set. This more or less negates the purpose of the tuner in the first place, since the traditional complaint about putting on 4 strings on one leg by hand (no tuner), and 3 on the other leg, is that if one string slips, then 2-3 other strings are possibly toast. I have mucked with something like this and pronounce it avoidable. Give it a miss as a design. However with that said, leather shoe strings will work.

Last one might note that there is no telling if a given tuner will fit a given qin. E.g., a possible problem with #2 is that the metal part that goes over the legs might be too big for the space between the leg "foot" and the bottom of the qin itself. There are probably odds that the bar form will work better.

Hypothetically would such a device work for silk strings? There has always been worry about the more rare and expensive silk strings being damaged by sharp edges in the pins (or whatever). Certainly my father-in-law the machinist would opine that he could fix that. I suspect he could. I have wondered if there exist plastic guitar rollers somewhere that might work as well?

recursive qin blogging

2008-02-23T12:18:00.001-08:00

http://yuguzhai.blogspot.com

wood gathering

2008-02-23T09:35:00.000-08:00

is an activity for qin makers it would seem. One might play "yu qiao wen da" (fisherman/woodcutter discussion), but in point of fact, gathering materials is also a theme. So last summer I found some Paulownia (Gilmer), Catalpa (ebay... hard to believe, but it's ok and not bad quality), Redwood (1 slab) courtesy of a reclamation company in California, 1 thick enough spruce piece courtesy of Crosscut, and 4 pieces of +200 year old growth cedar (not saying where). The latter is very exciting.
2 years from now we may know more. Oh yes, and alder for bottoms which by the heft of it feels very reasonable. I plan on making 1. cedar/alder, 2. spruce/notsureyet, 3.redwood/alder as different experiments. I'm going to let the Paulownia sit for a long time.

green qin is done

2008-02-23T09:27:00.001-08:00

And that took how long. 2 years? Now I need to string it and try it again. It's been awhile. This was done using the Japanese Cashew lacquer. And a top board that is probably too thin (1 inch or so). It's very light given the top is Paulownia and I believe the bottom was cedar (won't do that again). The "real lacquer" qin is receiving coat after coat of real lacquer (aka qi/urushi) and has a ways to go. Another qin with a top board that is THICK ENOUGH (1.5 inches) is started. This will be #3, top board is old-growth cedar, and bottom board is alder.

portable qin table done

2008-02-23T09:11:00.000-08:00

I might actually be done with this table. It's basically a cedar box with mahogany legs and hinges from Rockler. Since everything I do seems to be a learning experience (in the extreme), was this a learning experience??? Why, yes. So glad you asked about that. Why cedar for the box? Pros: easy to work with and seems good in terms of musical quality. I got CVG (clear vertical grain) from the local Crosscut store. The previous fixed/large qin table has a very good sound but it has a big closed box made out of cedar. This is a smaller box. Sounds ok. The con of cedar is that it is easily damaged. The pictures show: 1. the legs folded up, 2. the hinges just after they were put on, and 3. the finished (in the woodworking sense) table. The hardest part here has been getting the hinges on in such a way that the table didn't move and didn't squeak. Pass #1 before debugging was horribly squeaky. It is quite likely that I didn't get the wood of the legs close enough to the box on the top. I purchased some felt pads and put them between the top box and the legs. Now it is a little hard to get into the "open" position but it doesn't move and it doesn't squeak. So this design works, but what about a totally different design? I haven't actually taken it anywhere though to test its true portability.

I finished it with shellac and a couple coats of spreadable lacquer on the top to try to make the top harder. shellac is easy. I'm going to try something different in the future I think though.

Paulownia - Looking for Wood

2007-09-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

The qin is made of two boards more or less. The top board often being Paulownia or "fir" and the bottom board which is typically Catalpa.
So now a bit about Paulownia. I found some at Gilmer's as mentioned in the previous post. Paulownia or tong 桐 is often used as the wood for qin tops. In the first picture above we have a Paulownia leaf on a small baby Paulownia tree. The leaf however is no baby. Last summer Zeng Chengwei opined that qin are made from trees with big leaves and that applies to the tong tree and catalpa as well. The other two pictures show a close-up of Paulownia and a Paulownia board next to the catalpa from the previous post (Paulownia to the left; Catalpa to the right). So can you find it? I have found it. It's not the easiest wood to find either though. However there seem to be some tree farms in the US that grow it and then resell what they grow to asia including HK and Japan. The trees apparently grow very fast. An informant has told me that in general Paulownia trees should be cut down during the winter so that they won't have any sap in them. Otherwise you get the "sap" in the wood problem and there may be various ways of dealing with that including soaking in pools of water, lime-water, or the ever popular blowtorch.

As for the wood itself, it is rather amazing in that it is very light, somewhere between pine and balsa and is certainly easy to work. Both Paulownia and Catalpa are so-called hardwoods of course. Paulowia is a great example of a hardwood not being a hard wood. It dents easily. Qin dimensions in English are somewhat on the order of around 1 1/2 inch thick by 4 feet long, by 8-9 inches wide. This is really the tricky bit when it gets down to it. The wood for the top has to be thick enough to allow the three dimensional "camber" including the drop off near the yue-shan bridge. Your mileage may vary of course. The qin top is not flat. From the nut on the left to the seventh hui in the middle there is a small drop-off, and of course there is quite a bit when you get to the shoulder/yue-shan area. And of course across the qin it is rounded too.

So what other woods might be used? The main thing is that the top is the sound board when it gets down to it. And the wood should be relatively light with a relatively heavier base (1/2 thick or so). So although this is speculation, cedar, pine, spruce, maybe redwood if findable (I haven't found any so far but I might find some in Southern Oregon) might all work. At some point I intend to try a spruce top with an alder bottom.

Zeng Chengwei had a small baby model qin in London. He doesn't speak English and said in Chinese that the top was "wutong". From the botanical point of view there are many different kinds of tong, and I recognized his wutong as Paulownia. The bottom of course was Catalpa (seen it before, not a problem). On the other hand, qin are made from "shanmu" 杉木. Of course it isn't clear exactly what that means. The dictionary states "fir". A little googling in Chinese gets you evergreen tree pictures. Gee -- in the Pacific NW we might have some of that. It would be nice to see some first-hand and be a little more clear about what is used in China. Pine or cedar will work though. I need to get a chunk of Doug Fir that is qin sized and heft it and that will tell me if it is bottom material (I suspect so).

Catalpa - Looking for Wood

2007-09-22T19:27:00.001-07:00

Wood from the catalpa tree has been traditionally used in China to make the bottom of the qin and furniture and who knows what else. In Chinese catalpa is called: 梓(zi3). It is claimed that this is catalpa ovata. So this means in the USA you can just waltz down the street and find catalpa right? No it doesn't. Catalpa is not part of the lumber industry or culture in the good old USA. E.g., an old article on wood:
catalpa article ,
basically points out for whatever reason we (the USA) don't value it. It grows mostly in the East and midwest. It is possible to find it. But lumber types, especially purveyors of so-called "tonewood" (2 possible definitions: wood that is good for making musical instruments. def #2: wood with a higher price) won't have it. We burn it apparently and in some cases carvers will carve up small blocks of it. But finding it in the USA is not easy.

Ironically I remember such a tree in my grandparent's yard in Moline Kansas when I was a kid. This is because one of the popular names for catalpa is the Indian bean tree. And I certainly remember the seed pods.
Even more ironical - I found a catalpa a few blocks from my house and the three pictures in this blog consist of

1. the catalpa tree (you might be able to see the bean pods)

2. a catalpa leaf and one seed pod

3. a chunk of catalpa wood that should be enough for 3 qin bottom boards.

On the other hand, if you can't find catalpa, what might work? I talked to some people at Gilmer lumber in Portland about this and they suggested alder as a possibility, so I bought some and I will try it eventually. Alder is used in electric guitars (stratocasters) and seems to have good properties in the sense that it may be both heavy enough (the qin bottom should be heavier than the qin top board) and it may be less prone to unexpected movement. This after all is a big problem with wood and is why one wants wood to be dry. I had a cheap qin in Taiwan when I started playing the qin that basically warped. The entire qin bent down. A few years ago I took it apart separating the paulownia top from the catalpa bottom. It turned out that the top straightened out (paulownia is in some sense "weak" and in this case let the bottom have its way). The catalpa bottom had warped probably due to not being dry enough in the first place. Possibilities for replacement bottom wood for qin might include: cypress, alder, fir, poplar. Poplar actually has characteristics that are similar to catalpa but one worries about getting dry wood that won't warp over time. Western cedar is too light. The next qin I make will use alder.
I actually have some catalpa though and I'll use it eventually.

a tale of two qin

2007-09-15T21:15:00.001-07:00

So there's three qin in the pictures, right? However I am talking about the black qin (not the brown one) in the picture with two qin on a qin table and the green qin in the other picture. I could say a lot about these two specimens and will probably say more later. The point is that they are the two qin I've spent the last few years working on. They can both be fairly called "experiments". Experiments in finding wood, finding lacquer, doing the "luthier" bit (carpentry) and the finishing bit. The brown qin is a most excellent Zeng Chengwei qin. Ironically when I met Zeng Chengwei in London this summer he said he does about 2 qin a month. I do 2 qin about every 2 years :->. Not true -- not done yet with these two.

The black one is a study in disaster. Basically I am learning a lot about qin repair thanks to it.
It is not done yet and may not survive. It has some rather severe bridge defects (yue shan) which I need to try and fix. However there is a rather good success here in that as you can see I finished the top with real (大漆) lacquer from Japan. About 5 coats on top of the base and sanded with 1000 grade sandpaper (as Zeng Chengwei does). This worked. I did not find it too toxic although I do not recommend smearing it all over your naked body to see what happens. After all, it has the same toxic chemical in it that poison ivy has. However it is far less bad for the lungs than many other "paints" such as western lacquer or the fake Japanese lacquer called cashew. I built a Japanese-style drying box for the lacquer and MOST OF THE TIME got it to dry properly. It finishes fairly easily in fact.

The green qin is about done actually. However it's finishing phase has been very very slow.
The green qin is being finished with fake Japanese lacquer called cashew. Cashew for me is a bear to finish. It is hard to get on and hard to sand. Steve Dydo suggests using a brush
and pumice. I started off with a pad but that didn't seem to work very well. A brush
may be a good idea and I'll try and use one in the future. Pumice does work and so does
1000 grade sandpaper.

Real lacquer seems much easier in fact. Cashew seems to have lots of little pinholes and has been hard for me to get on evenly. I'm still trying to fix "holes" where the underlying base shows through in the green finish because I sanded my way through trying to get out
some rough uneven spot. I am making progress and just about have the top done
finally.

More on other aspects of these two "experiments" later.

a qin table

2007-09-15T20:50:00.001-07:00

So I've built a qin table. The basic idea was to build one that somewhat approximated the picture of the qin table in the Yuguzhai qin handbook . However given my rough skills as a woodworker and the complexity of that Yuguzhai design, I only approximated it. This is not a portable qin table. It is "fixed". It has a box made out of cedar as cedar was easy to find. The framework was made out of some kind of mahogany that I found at the local Crosscut store. The table at first was wobbly side to side because the legs weren't thick enough but I braced it and now it is not wobbly. It sounds pretty good actually and is big enough for two qin. The box was made from cedar because cedar is easy to find in Oregon (heh...) and is more or less a material you might use for the top part of a qin. I used shellac to finish the cedar and then put a couple of coats of brushable lacquer on the top to try and make the all too soft cedar a little more resistant to wear and tear. Lots of mistakes, but it's time for the next qin table, which will be an attempt at a portable qin table featuring some leg "hinges" I found at Rocklers. Btw, one of the two images shows the table with a Zeng Chengwei qin and one shows the table plain.
Here are some lessons learned:
1. the box is bigger than normal qin tables. Doesn't seem to make the sound worse. This may depend on the qin.
2. little table legs should have very very DRY wood. The mahogany seemed straight until I cut it into 1 inch sections and then became a bit unstraight.
3. i don't care for gorilla glue on the outside of anything. It's too messy. I did use it on the inside of the qin table for bracing.