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FINAL WEEK TUESDAY REPORT
Time for assembly and setup! I attached the sympathetic neck first to the body.


Here's what it looks like so far:


For the sympathetic strings, I have a spool of leftover piano wire, .014 gauge, that I used for stringing up the Chinese Guzcheng. The spool of wire cost me $10.00, and I'm using about a 1/4 of the spool at most.


A single wire will be used for two strings, so I cut the wire to the correct length, attach it to one of the tuning pins on the neck, and start tying it to the endpins shown here.

I go around to the back, through the center hole coming towards the neck, wrap it around one full pass, back in the hole from the front to back, and around the other side of the post coming back to the second tuning pin on the neck.

Here's all of the strings loosely attached.


Next, I was going to cut slots in each of the brass pins on the peghead. But I only need to raise the string slightly off the wood. I found that slipping washers under each pin was much faster and served the purpose. It would probably be best to glue the washers down so they don't get lost should a string ever break.


I used the strings as my guide now for determining the location for the bridge. I marked the position with masking tape.


Almost forgot to drill for the ground wire. Sorry the "posed" picture is blurry. I was holding the drill and camera at the same time, and couldn't really focus. I actually had to spread the strings apart with one hand and drill with the other for the grounding wire.


I also had to drill through the delrin base and fed the ground wire up through it. I'm having the strings sit on a piece of brass so the ground wire here will be attached to the brass and help to electrically ground the sympathetic strings.