A Lute - at last

Finally, I justify the name of the blog.

This is a lute.

Go on, look it up in your dictionary. It is, by definition, a lute. Sure it doesn't look much like the picture from medieval England of the King's lute-player, with a multi-stringed instument, with a weird bent-back peg-board.

It's more in the historical line of middle Eastern or even Chinese lutes, which pre-date the Pommie version by quite a few centuries.But I can't really claim it's that either, it's just a thing that grew out of the wood, like a wood-turned mushroom.

technically: 4 stringed, (bronze wire), strung to zither pins at both ends, sound chamber is a turned bowl of pinus radiata, rod is glue laminated jarrah/cypress pine.

It is non-fretted.

One night I was worrying about how to fix the fret-board, when a voice boomed out of the night sky, and said "Dooooon't fret!"

So I didn't.


But I'm thinking the voice may have misled me, because the lute would be more useful as a musical instrument if it was fretted, so I'm thinking about fitting a fret-board.

Or perhaps make another lute next year, fixing all the mistakes that I currently pass off as design features, and make that one a proper fretted lute.
We will see.

All the best from vsquared

Rest in peace. Scott

An old mate died recently. Because one tends to feel pretty useless at times like that I offered to make an Urn for his ashes.

It ended in 3 urns, not one. The lower photo is the main one.

I'm not entirely happy about any of them, but I did my best.

New guinea rosewood, finished with Rustins plastic.

All three made from the one rather umipressive branch, so at least it was a good use of resources.