1/6/2011 Stand Mods

After getting some great helpful feedback from members of my Virtual Harp Circle (Yahoo! group) friends I decided that the harp needed to be shorter and angled more towards the player. That would make the strings more vertical and the player would not have to lift the arms as high to play. Here on the workbench I've propped up the front of the harp to simulate that change.
Then you see the result in place. I decided against removing too much of the legs of the stand. Not much difference, but hope it still balances well in wood. That is the plan for the Limerick soundboard stuck to the side. By using that string layout, and that for the neck, I hope to get the same sound.

With that settled I could disassemble the foam mock-up and start to pick out my wood. This may seem like an easy job, but I spent 6 hours yesterday working on the project- which brings me up to about 21 hours so far- and I haven't even started to make sawdust.

Here is the stack of foam and the stack of cherry wood.
This is the scary part- now I have to commit and start cutting up the wood. Without a set plan this will be interesting. I read recently that with a prototype you just make the first piece and then fit the next one to it. . . and so on. Easy for that guy to say, he wasn't making a harp!