Kravik Lyre Project

[Mage]

So I mentioned in passing a while back that I'm setting myself a project to build a Kravik lyre. Figured I'd make a thread about it in case anyone else is interested in doing likewise, but also as a sort of sounding board for ideas and decisions. This isn't going to be done and dusted in a few weeks, it's very much a slow burner but I'll try to keep it updated. I'm not assuming any prior knowledge from anyone reading this, and most of it is new to me too. Comments and questions are welcome OFC.

For starters, if you don't know what a Kravik lyre is, it's a seven-string instrument thought to date to the 14th century. It's likely to be older than this though, because most were made from softwoods like spruce and it's not exactly a material for the ages. This website is the tits for information and has audio clips for the curious: https://www.michaeljking.com/kravik-lyre.htm

Yop introduced me to a fairly awesome band called Wardruna and the singer Einar Selvik plays one. Their most recent album Kvitravn makes great dramatic use of old instruments and we were watching a recording of the band when it dawned on me that I could probably play one much more comfortably than my current guitar and ukulele. Seeing how expensive they are was a great motivator to try building my own! Also not to point fingers but in one of the TLS videocalls, I mentioned wanting to build one and @abigail whipped out her lyre which helped swing me on the idea (Abi feel free to wang a photo of yours in the thread, it's lovely).

So my motivation for wanting to do this is it's cheaper than buying in, it's a great technical challenge and a great excuse to crack out my tools. Most importantly, I can think ahead and build it to accommodate myself. Most of you know I have massive norks but it might surprise you that my bewbage is quite an impediment for guitar and ukulele playing. Combine that with my hypermobile joints and my inability to master fret playing becomes much more obvious when you see how I can't just press down on a string - my fingertips flex outwards far enough to touch other strings. Also, supporting the weight of a guitar puts strain on my wrist and elbow joints. Also also, I'm allergic to nickel and my guitar has nickel-wound strings (am now aware that stainless steel strings exist after it was restrung, lol). All of this led to my buying a cheap and cheerful ukulele to try it out. Things I noticed immediately were weight (as in it barely weighs anything) and that nylon strings are much kinder to fingertips. Despite having four strings, the fretboard is still problematic, so I started learning fingerpicking style, which is much more manageable. Lots of songs are played with open strings which got me wondering whether I'd fare better with a fretless instrument, so here we are.

More to come later!

 

[Mage]

Okay so I've made a couple of decisions already, and even gone ahead and ordered some fluorocarbon strings and a tailpiece from Michael King's Etsy shop. Figured having those would help visualise the size. I also have a ruler for using a cutting/trimming wheel with, which measures up to 60cm but is actually a little longer, this is super handy because a standard size lyre is 61.5cm. I haven't bought any of the build plans available online because I'm going to modify the shape anyway. There's some really good handmade models online to use as references too. I'm aiming to make a standard size lyre because that's the tonal I want to achieve, plus it's still smaller than my guitar.

I've settled on cherrywood for the body and probably the top too, I did lean towards lindenwood but the timber place I've been emailing don't have top sheets wide enough (fuck knows why, I'm guessing they buy it in as is). Said place stocks timber for luthiers so it's already seasoned and ready to work. There's bound to be a cost trade-off here but they've been cagey about prices so far. This worries me because it's a forty minute drive one-way (this is a lot for me on my own) and I don't want to get railroaded into buying because I'm there and don't want to go away empty-handed. They know my Dutch is crap, lol.
Anyway, I went for cherrywood because it's great tone wood and whilst probably not used historically, cherrywood (Prunus avium) definitely would have been available in Scandinavia at that time and earlier. Rosewood would have been too but that's hecking expensive, some rosewood-growing areas are protected under international law and quality varies where that isn't an issue. It's also a strategic choice as cherrywood is firm but not unyielding so it won't require much effort to cut into whilst being sturdy enough to resist a lot of errant slips of the chisel (dunno if anyone's tried working pine by hand but it's like butter, I'd make a big mistake fucking quickly).
One thing I need to add here is that I can hear (bear in mind that my hearing isn't normal by a long shot, lol) almost a buzz from pine instruments, like a sharpness to the tone. It grates on me so pine, like peace, was never an option. I much prefer the tones of walnut, cherry, rose etc. There's a warmth to the sound that's hard to describe.
Also cherrywood is aesthetically sexy, it's just a very appealing timber to look at. I ain't wanking over burlwood or nothing, I like a nice simple grain pattern and it ages well too.

This leaves me with a couple of other decisions to make - what material do I choose for the bridge? Sitka spruce is the most common but there we've got my reluctance to use pinewood. I have actually found a German seller who has bridges made from cow bone and honestly, I'm curious as to how it would affect the sound. Bone has a nice look to it and the yellowing with age would contrast nicely with the cherrywood becoming more red-hued. I could go for cherrywood again but if I did I'd be inclined to stain it to match the tuning pegs. Speaking of which, WRT those I need to decide:

- tuning pegs front or back
- what manner of tuning pegs
- what materials?

The link I posted in the OP does mention whether to site the tuning pegs front or back (this affects the size of bridge that I'll need and determines whether the strings go up the front of the instrument or dip behind it), there doesn't seem to be a consensus as such, so here it's more personal preference. Something that's bugged me on other Kravik lyres I've seen is that the pegs seem really close together - it looks crowded and messy. I would much prefer to go modern here and install geared pegs but the options are rather limited. I can get planetary-geared pegs which are retro-fitted to violins but they are eye-wateringly expensive for a set of seven. Brilliant design though, can't believe it took this long for someone to invent such a thing (though to be fair it's not a new concept, but classical music purists like friction pegs apparently). I'm kinda ruling these out unless I win the lottery. The other shit bit is that they're plastic-bodied and I've gone a bit resistant to gratuitous plastic use.

There's the aforementioned friction pegs, which is just wood. I don't like this - my ukulele has cheap geared pegs which slip whilst I'm playing which is fuck annoying so I'm not inflicting this on myself again, lol. I can't trust that the temperature in the house is consistent enough to accommodate expansion and shrinkage so these are a no unless I'm out of other options.

Alternatives are guitar pegs, which could work if I make the peghead slimmer but I'm worried that it'll be a structural weakness. Also the seven strings makes any peg option fucking awkward, lol. I'm gonna end up with one left over. Handy to have a spare I suppose. Banjo pegs are something I've considered, there's a US banjo maker who has German-made pegs but longer than standard ones. Again, nice but hecking pricey.
Finally there's the fucking obvious answer of metal lyre/harp pegs, which have a tuning key to accommodate the slimline nature. I'm not averse to this idea per se but TBH I haven't read up enough on them yet.

So, anything that isn't plastic (including decorative shit) is on the maybe list. At this stage I'm going to think about it some more, I have a rolling to-do list for this project and the entry about tuning pegs keeps looking at me.
I'm definitely open to suggestions here BTW. Next post is probably going to be a ramble about the construction design.

 

[Mage]

Quick update to say the strings arrived yesterday (fuck me that was quick!). Lovely hand-written note from Michael King saying if there's anything he can help with, just drop him a line. He also put in a couple of lyre photo cards, I love little things like that.

I guess this means I should draw up some plans and go to the timber place!

 

[Mage]

Well my plans to go to the timber place have been a bit borked for a couple of reasons: they're only open on three mornings in the week (you can make an appointment but this is me and my inability to adhere to timeframes we're talking about). Since my last post in here, I've been kinda preoccupied so it's not happened yet. Gonna try for next week. Whilst I'm there, I'm going to peruse the timber options for a bespoke case too, no point in going to this level of effort and not protecting it.

I've found some cheeky chappy online who has posted photos of the lyre plans you can buy from Michael King as part of his own project, he's building one from spruce so I'll be checking it out in more detail. Suffice to say that it's given me a useful nudge in drawing up my own plans because all the measurements are clearly indicated and visible. I've had a bit of a moral flap with this because MK isn't a big shitty corporation so it kinda feels wrong to effectively rip the information, but on the other hand I'm going to customise the frig out of it anyway so a lot of the measurements are useless to me from the off.

I decided to stick with wooden tuning pegs for now, if I really dig the lyre then I can upgrade to planetary gears and circumvent extra screwholes entirely. Of course when I went to order them (ebony ones from Poland), they were out of stock. Typical!
I settled on ebony because it's a reliably hardwood with a density roughly twice that of cherry, which is already sturdy so I'm happy both woods will be tough enough for my caggy-handedness. Also the company who make them have different head options and they have axe and tulip headed pegs. I COULD SETTLE FOR BOXWOOD TULIP HEADED PEGS BUT WE ALL KNOW THAT AIN'T HAPPENING.