a simple bending jig

Here's a simple bending jig I made for the curved sides of a lap dulcimer. Pine lath about 2/25" wide and 1/4" thick was used for the bent sides.
I drew the outside curve I needed onto the wood base, then measured in 1/4" to draw the inside curve.
Pieces of wood are strategically glued along the curve to hold the wood in place while it dries.
The pine lath has to be dampened (you can soak it overnight in a plastic bag) and then gently bent with the hands to form the basic curve. Then it's inserted into the jig and left to dry for a day or so. It came out perfect! I made two and flipped one over to make the symmetrical sides.
A couple of things I discovered when I built my second jig - it was designed for circular curves, and they seem to exert more pressure and are a lot harder to wrangle. I also used smaller wood pieces for the guides and they don't have a big enough attachment area, so they tend to pop off. I may have to use screws underneath. I haven't managed a full circle, but can get something like a pear shape out of it (see the backless two stringed fretless lute), so it's still good!

bending wood

Bending wood was starting to seem almost impossible until I found the easy answer!
I was even all set to try and build a bending jig, complete with dangerous hot pipe and all. Then I thought I would try using a hair curling iron (a suggestion I found online) and in trying it I realized the curling iron wasn't doing much, but the wood was bending just because you could force it to. That's because I had picked a really bendy wood - pine lath from the home improvement store. If you get it good and wet - spray it down for a couple of hours or soak it overnight - you can bend it by hand. You have to be careful not to force it too much or the grain may separate on top. But you can get some nice gentle curves without fancy equipment, in keeping with the microluthery philosophy.
So the secret is picking wood that really wants to cooperate. I wouldn't try this with poplar, for instance.
Then you have to let it dry with the curve in place. You can tie the ends together with string - this works well with teardrop shapes - or you can make a simple bending jig to dry it on (see next post).

two string open back fretless lute with pentatonic fret markings

Pine back and sides, oak tuners, and purple poplar neck. The fret markings are cut into the side of the neck. Nylon fishing line strings tuned to d and a. You can see the screws holding the neck in place.

you can play a pentatonic (5-note) scale

by taking the notes of the familiar scale - do re mi fa so la ti - and taking out the fa and the ti. This leaves you with just 5 notes: do re me so la and of course back to do.
Notice that there are 5 different natural modes of this pentatonic scale, each one beginning the scale on a different note. So you have a mode starting on do, a mode starting on re, a mi mode, a so mode, and a la mode. Each mode has a different sound.

moon lute v.4

This is another moon lute attempt - this one designed more after the dan nguyet, with a long neck and really high frets. You can see that I reused the body from version 2. The pegs are actually friction pegs, and with the fairly low string tension they work pretty well even though they aren't tapered. The strings are 50# and 30# monofilament fishing line. You can bend the strings by pressing down on them, especially the lower notes where there is more slack. It's actually pretty fun to play.

It's pentatonically fretted and I started to miss the other notes and didn't want to have to bend up to them, so I decided to make another fretless instrument.

a short list of pentatonic tunes

• Sukiyaki (Ue O Muite Arukou) - just the verse, not the bridge, which has some extra notes
• Pirate Ships (Wendy Waldman / Judy Collins / The Cure)
• Theme from "Wagon Train"
• They Call the Wind Maria
• I'm Going to Leave Old Texas Now
• How Can I Keep From Singing
• They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love
• Beech Spring (hymn tune)
• Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
• How Firm A Foundation
• Bonny Doon
• Farewell to Tarwathie

moon lute v.2

This was my second attempt at a homebrew moon lute/yueqin/gekkin. Version 1 was a rectangular one-piece, also with raised frets. It was actually kind of cool with a banjo-ey sound. The neck was a little too wide, though. Also, the tuners were held in with screws that drove me nuts. I recycled the body into another instrument.