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Kantele,guitar,bowed lyre help ?

I wanna build small kantele and bowed lyre aka jouhikko made from cigar box.

Searching small kantele and bowed lyre dimensions and measures.

Found only that in google smallkantele1.pdf and that Construction of Kantele

What size cigar boxes is best for making simple slide guitar ?

Too long and narrow is not great for playing. Too big is like square regular guitar. In this case regular guitar is better.

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Permalink Reply by phlogister on July 29, 2012 at 1:56am

About jouhikko, no matter whether you make a bow from corrugated cardboard or anything else, it is important what you use as the ribbon there. They used to use horse hair in bows. As i am so ignorant in this, i had to try it out. I took a piece of fishing line, and after i rubbed it against the rosin, i were really able to make sound by rubbing the fishing line against a metal string of my guitar. So i guess one option is to use many fishing lines in parallel, and rub them strongly against rosin, this rosin is what finally makes the sound. I happened to have some pieces of rosin, this is an amber-like substance which they use for soldering. I used it for soldering, but violin players use it, and they sell it where they sell musical instruments. This is in fact a dried tree resin, so perhaps some kind of tree resin would do as well. Being so ignorant in this, i wrote it in case if someone is as ignorant as me.

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Permalink Reply by Seaman Jay on July 29, 2012 at 2:10am

The cheapest bow I made used painters' self adhesive paper tape as the "hair". You have to re-tension it all the time (with a finger) and replace the tape quite often, but when it's good enough for an upright bass it's good enough for jouhikko (test runs at least).

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Permalink Reply by The Phrygian Kid on July 29, 2012 at 3:04am

A hank of horsehair is only a few bucks on eBay ;)
So is a block of rosin

Permalink Reply by Randy S. Bretz on July 29, 2012 at 2:27am

.http://handmademusic.ning.com/group/forgotteninstruments..... there`s a group over at the clubhouse just for this type of stringed instruments with a few builders who have made them.

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Permalink Reply by phlogister on July 30, 2012 at 7:39am

I think once they used a turtle shell the same way as they today use cigar box. The first string instrument was likely a bow, which went through a turtle shell with one end, and there was a bridge on the turtle shell which transmitted the vibration of the string to the turtle shell. The ancient greek lyre (had four strings) is a modification of this, two bows called arms go through the turtle shell, and there is a yoke between these arms to fasten the strings. My original idea was that these two bows were bendable, which enabled to release the tension from the strings and to tune strings with knots.