Strings 'n pins

Cleaned up!

After I had removed the chord bars, I removed the old, rusty and dusty strings. I started off by doing this very carefully, but then it took me 30 minutes to remove one bass string. The problem was that the string goes through a very small hole at the bottom of the autoharp, and on the other side of that hole in the bridge, the strings were wound and could not be pulled through the hole. And the bass strings were too big too be pulled through it in the other direction. So I literally had to cut them off, unfortunately. The higher strings are thinner, so they were less of a problem. Overall, it was a bigger task than I had imagined beforehand..

And the next task proved even more difficult: removing the tuning pins. It took me a few hours to remove all of them, because some were pretty stuck. Also, I have nowhere near enough strength in my arms to handle such a task without complaining all the way through.

My dad working on
the crack in the back

My mom cleaning the holes
for the tuning pins

But then, I could finally give it a good polish!
I went to my parents' house, because the cleaning of the tuning pins would require some equipment I do not have in my house. It was a beautiful day, so I sat with my mom and dad in their garden with flowers, butterflies, two really weird chickens and one really weird cat, and it was awesome. My dad was immediately fascinated (he hadn't seen the autoharp before) and ran to the garage to get all of his equipment. My mom and I cleaned the tuning pins, which were so rusty, it took quite some effort to get them clean. Well, clean-ish. My dad looked at the crack in the back of the sound box, because I do not have any experience with wood work of any kind. He glued it back together and clamped it in a workbench.

This meant I had to leave the autoharp with my parents, since it had to remain in the workbench until the glue had dried.

Cleaning the tuning pins

My beloved two 21st century instruments
just before a performance last week

So then I was home alone. My boyfriend and I had broken up the day before so he was gone, and the autoharp was gone.. so I decided to spend some quality time with my 21st century autoharp (you know, because she was jealous of the care and attention I have spent on the 19th century one the last weeks). It was nice to actually play the autoharp again. I ended up in a sort of philosophical state where I pondered how therapeutic music actually is. It may be a bit off topic for this blog, but I wanted to address it shortly. I have played music for my entire life, and I always enjoyed it, but since I play the autoharp, it has brought me so much more joy. The magnificent thing about an autoharp is that it's such a warm, vibrating sound that travels through your whole body when you play it. It is an excuse to cuddle with an instrument and just purely enjoy the sound that comes out of it. When I play the violin, I always have to be aware of what I am doing exactly, in order to not go off key. No such thing with the autoharp. At this particular moment, it is the thing that makes me most happy. And I would really like to develop myself in this area. And I think that repairing and restoring the old 'harp is actually helping.

My mom let me know that the glue is holding, so that means that the crack has been repaired! We will be reunited today. I have ordered new strings, and they have already come in the mail. At the moment, I am actually getting somewhere and I am already really proud of myself.