The workshop journal.
A slow record of what happens at the bench — a photograph, a title, a few lines. Nothing polished. Nothing hurried.
It is kept partly for those waiting on a commission, who like to watch their instrument come slowly out of the wood — and partly for anyone who finds the making as quiet and good to follow as the playing. There is no schedule to it. An entry appears when something at the bench is worth stopping to note: a board that rang true, a curve that took three attempts, a crwth strung for the first time. The rest is sawdust.
First strings on a crwth
Six strings of gut go on at the last — four to be bowed, two to drone beneath.
Read the entry →
Graduating a mandolin top
Graduation is the long patience of it — thinning a carved top a shaving at a time until it rings under the knuckle just so.
Read the entry →
Bending the yoke
The yoke of a crwth is the hardest hour of the build — a straight arm of maple asked to take a curve it has no wish to take.
Read the entry →
Cutting the sound holes
Two holes in the soundboard of a crwth, and a whole voice waits behind them.
Read the entry →
Choosing the tonewoods
A harp begins long before the first cut — in the woodshed, with the hand laid flat on a board.
Read the entry →
Notes as they come.
If you would like these entries as they are written, say so when you next write to the workshop and Richard will send them by email — no more than a handful a month, and never anything to sell you. Those with an instrument on order are followed most closely of all: their own build, photographed and noted at each stage, is a journal kept for them alone.