In Adam Davie's "Life of Alexander" from the 14th century, we read "At the feste was trumping,/ Piping and eke taborying,/ Sytolyng and eke harpyng."

From "The Pearl" (Pearl Poet, 14th century), Canto II:3 "Fowls there flew thru the forest in flocks, Of flamboyant hues, both small and great; But citole string and gittern player (note BOTH are listed here) Their reckless mirth cannot repeat, For when these birds their wings did beat- They sang so, with a sweet assent. More gracious glee could no one get Than to hear and see this adornment."

From Sir Cleges (Middle English Breton Lay) "And as he walkyd uppe and done Sore sygheng, he herd a sowne Off dyverse mynstralsy, Off trumpers, pypers, and nakerners, Off herpers notys and gytherners, Off sytall and of sautrey. (this alliterative phrase seemed popular in a number of places) Many carrals and grete dansyng In every syde herd he syng, In every place, treuly. He wrong hys hondes and wepyd sore; Mekyll mon he made ther, Sygheng full pytewysly."

From Confessio Amantis "Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins" - Incipit Liber Octavus: Part 1 "He tawhte hir til sche was certein Of Harpe, of Citole and of Rote, With many a tun and many a note Upon Musique, upon mesure, And of hire Harpe the temprure He tawhte hire ek, as he wel couthe."

In later 14th century the references are fewer, and by Chaucer, the citole is noted as being of the Knights Tale, ie, already archaic. "The form of Venus, glorious as could be, Was naked, Floating on the open sea, And from the navel down all covered was With green waves, bright as ever any glass. A citole in her small right hand had she, And on her head, and beautiful to see, A garland of red roses, sweet smelling..." Though of course, it could be a Chaucerian notion that Venus had the cithara, not the citole.

A stock phrase of the alliterative poetry survives with "Citole and psaltery" in various forms such as from Richard Holland's Buke of the Howlate (ca. 1450): "The psaltery, the sytholis, the soft sytharist, The croude and the monycordis, the gittrynis gay; The rote, and the recordour, the rivupe, the rist, The trumpe and the talburn, the tympane but tray"

There is still a citoler at the court of Navarre, Arnaut Guillem de Hursua, juglar de citola, who received payments in 1412 and 1413. Tinctoris gives us a very nice description in his "De Inventione et Usu Musicae" (c.1487); "Yet another derivative of the lyra is the instrument called cetula by the Italians, who invented it. It has four brass or steel strings usually tuned, a tone, a fourth, and back a tone, and its is played with a plectum. Since the cetula is flat, it is fitted with certain certain wooden elevations on the neck, arranged proportionately, and known as frets. The strings are pressed against these by the fingers to make a higher or lower note." But Tinctoris also states that by the late 15th century, "the cetula is only used in Italy by rustics to accompany light songs and to lead dance music." There is perhaps a question whether the instrument he is describing is already heading toward the cittern - the wire stringing, and the re-entrant tuning are both characteristic of the Renaissance cittern (of which much information on tuning and stringing is available), and he may instead be describing an instrument in transition. The cittern was popular both with nobles and with lower classes, and was kind of the bar-room guitar of Renaissance England.

The "rustics" in England put on plays, and in the 15th century Cornish miracle play Ordinale de Origine Mundi, King David speaks: Wethong menstels ha tabours trey-hans harps ha trompours cythol crowd fylh ha savtry psalmus gyttrens ha nakrys organs in weth cymbalys recordys ha symphony.

Translation - [Blow minstrels and tabors/Three hundred harps and trumpets/Citoles, crowd, fiddle and psaltery/Shawms, gitterns and nakers/Organs, also cymbals/Recorders and symphony.]

But after the 15th century the instrument seems to vanish from the mind. The common belief is that it morphed slowly into the Cittern, and thus the name citole is merely replaced.

Thus the citole starts out as a jongleur and troubadour instrument in the 12th century, sees a brief but spectacular favor in the 13th and 14th, amongst the courts and in the heroic romances that entertained them, and then seems to slowly fade away into a has-been instrument by the 15th century, replaced by its successor, the cittern.

References to gittern players can be found from 1306 in England to Italian players of 1460's and 1470's. Particularly in the 14th century and early fifteenth, they appear in vogue, especially in the courts. Charles V inventory in 1373 includes four, including one of ivory. Court of Este and the court of Ferrara include hiring information of master players, and the Duke Leonello d'Este purchased one for himself in 1445. Dante describing round back of gittern: "...just as it would be blameworthy operation to make a spade of a fine sword or a goblet of a fine gittern..." Jean Gerson, in French sermon of 1400, compares the four cardinal virtues to "la guiterne de quatre cordes". Chaucer mentions the instrument as that one used by the parish clerk to serenade the carpenter's wife "The moone, whan it was night, ful brighte shoon/ And Absolon his Giterne hath i-take". It also shows up in Piers Plowman: "Ich can not tabre, no trompe, ne telle faire gestes, / Ne fithelyn at gestes, ne harpen,/ Japen ne jagelyn, ne gentilische pipe,/ Nother sailen, ne sautrien, ne singe with the giterne." Tinctoris describes the gittern as "it is very obvious that the instrument invented by the Catalans, which some call the ghiterra and others the ghiterna, is descended from the lute; for it has the same tortoise-shell shape, tuning and method of playing as the lute, though it is much smaller." Tuning thus would be 4th/3rd/4th. But like with the citole, Tinctoris obverses in Ferrera "the ghiterra is used most rarely, because of the thinness of its sound. When I heard it in Catalonia, it was being used much more often by women, to accompany love-songs, than by men." He already saw the instrument in decline, replaced by the lute and up and coming guitarras. But it was far from dead. Henry VIII in the tallies of his possessions at his death had listed "four gitterons called Spanish Vialles." Don Luys Milan of Valencia in 1536 distinguishes the Gittern from the Spanish gittern or "vihuela" as the latter having six strings, and the former having four. Michael Praetorius as late as 1618 still provides a tuning for the instrument at d' a f c or g' d bb f, with the actual pitch varying with size of the instrument. However, these references to Gittern may instead be to the four course "guitar" rather than an actual gittern.

Like the citole, the instrument seems to have had a hey-day of the 13th-14th centuries, but went into decline after that.

MORPHOLOGY IN REPRESENTATION: WHAT DOES A CITOLE LOOK LIKE? The image on the left is from the Bible of Charles the Bald from the 9th century -the one on the right, from the Utrecht Psalter, Psalm 43, also from the 9th century. These show the cithara in transition to the new form of instrument. The left shows the cithara/lyra having acquired a fingerboard, though the arms still support the top crossbar, even if ornamentally. The figure from Utrecht shows the neck now free of the arms, but the vestages of the arms still present in the broad curls at the top of the body of the instrument where it joins the neck. It is from instruments like these of the 9th century that the citole/gittern develops.

Chronologically, our next representation of the instrument is this sculpture by Benedetto Antelami, ca.1180, from the Baptistry in Parma, Italy. It shows an instrument with four distinct strings, a bridge, definite raised frets, and small wings at the top of the body. The strings run to an endpeg or piece. Unclear in these pictures is the small rosette shallowly carved into the soundboard. We cannot see the back of the instrument, but it appears to be flat, as it is very close to the body. The player uses a plectum, a fairly heavy arrow shaped one (as opposed to the light quill plectums also of the period). This instrument appears to be the direct precursor of the citole/gittern. Most individuals seem to classify it as a citole, and it is the instrument copied by modern reproductions that call themselves "citoles," including the instruments by Bernard Ellis and by Ancestral Instruments.

Then, of course, we hit the high period of the instrument in the 13th century, and the images are more numerous, but also more problematic. Take for example this set of images from the Cantigas da Santa Maria, from 13th century Spain:

Here we have four pairs of instruments portrayed, numbered left to right, top to bottom, 1-4. The lower two obviously contain a bowed vielle (images 3,4). But textually (in the romance descriptions) the citole was often paired with the fiddle. Three images (1, 3, 4) have the plucked instruments with four strings, while a single (2) has both sickle shaped instruments as having three strings (indeed, they look very much like plucked rebecs). The left hand instrument in 1 and the right hand instrument in 3 are very close in shape and structure, both having the "holly leaf shape", a decided fingerboard with frets, a bridge of some kind. Number 1's however has a fixed bridge, and no tailpiece, whereas an end-nut is visible (if not the tailpiece) in number 3. The instruments in 2 and 4 both have sickle shaped pegboxes, but the 2 image has no fingerboard, is pear shaped and has three strings, when the one in four has a fingerboard, four strings, and a more rounded body, similar to the right hand instrument in 1. I believe what we have here is the instrument breaking up into its component types. Numbers 1(left) and 3 are citoles - they seem to retain the characteristic wings, frets and body shape of the earlier form. Whereas 1(right),2,4 are probably gitterns, as they seem to fit the later descriptions of the instrument as having a rounded body shape. (though I'm still tempted to call 2 a rebec, as it was sometimes played by plucking rather than bowing).

The left image is from Lincoln Cathedral, dating around 1270. The right is from Strasbourg Cathedral, the west portal, and dates from the 13th cent. Both show what are commonly referred to as BOTH gitterns and citoles. The Strasbourg sculpture shows the characteristic wings, end trefoil endpeg, and four strings of the citole like instrument. It also appears to have a flat back. The Lincoln image also has four strings, a tailpiece, a bridge, and is plucked by the arrow shaped plectum. However, the Strasbourg pegbox is sickle shaped, and the Lincoln image lacks a fingerboard with frets. The Strasbourg sculpture I'd categorize as similar enough to the citole to allow it to be so classified. The Lincoln image is tougher, as the defining wing structures are missing, and the instrument almost looked like a plucked fiddle. Wright claims it for the citole camp - though I am not quite as sure as he is.

The left image is a sculpture from the Minstrels' Gallery in Exeter Cathedral, ca 1300. The right is the Coronation of the Virgin from The De Lisle Psalter, English c.1310. Both show a citole. The Exeter sculpture shows a strong resemblence to the Parma image, with four strings, flat body, tailpiece, rosette, bridge, fretted fingerboard. The wing structures are missing, but this somehow seems less disturbing here. The right figure is definitely our winged culprit - all the details fall together - the fingerboard with frets, four strings, wings, rosette, arrow plectum, tailpeg in trefoil. Only now this odd neck has developed, that is deep with a cut-out hole for the thumb. It is definitely the cittern in the making (see below), but seems a strange step here. Nonetheless, definitely a citole.

This interesting image I photographed at the Yorkshire Museum in York, England. It is a bit of the original late 13th century stained glass that survives from the ruin of St. Mary's Abbey at the same location (apparantly Henry VIII destroyed the abbey, and only ruins now remain, which they very interestingly built the museum around). This actually caught my wife's eye before mine, but it is truly intriguing as it literally is "holly leaf" shaped - with four points on the body on both sides. Though hard to make out in this image (the photo was a little difficult, as the roundelle was only about 8-10 inches across and backlit in a dark room) there were four strings on the body, but six pegs in the head. The instrument does have a tailpiece, but if there is a trefoil or quatrefoil at the end, it cannot be made out. There are no frets drawn. There is a large plectum, though it looks to me more like a stripped quill plectum than the heavy arrow-shaped ones in other images. Still, I definitely would have to class this instrument as a citole, if something of an outlyer in exact morphology.

Stained glass window from Lincoln Cathedral, listed as probably 14th century. I don't know if this is original or restored glass. The instrument here is a wonderfully clear representation of a citole that looks almost like a picture of the Warwick Castle gittern below. Has the traditional body with trefoil leaf tail and wings, clearly fretted fingerboard, large thick neck with hole piercing it for the thumb, and a happy little dragon head at the termination of the pegbox.. Potentially interesting features are the number of strings, which appears to be six double courses (six strings are shown going across the instrument, though the pegbox has twelve pegs) instead of a more standard four. The other very interesting feature (and of possible relevance to the Warwick citole) is the lack of a tailpiece. Instead, it looks like a fixed bridge (like you would see on a lute or a modern guitar). Could be artists error, as the fixed bridge does get awfully close to the tail, but the width of the scalloped piece is suggestive of a true fixed bridge.

This interesting image I photographed at the Yorkshire Museum in York, England. It is a bit of the original late 13th century stained glass that survives from the ruin of St. Mary's Abbey at the same location (apparantly Henry VIII destroyed the abbey, and only ruins now remain, which they very interestingly built the museum around). This actually caught my wife's eye before mine, but it is truly intriguing as it literally is "holly leaf" shaped - with four points on the body on both sides. Though hard to make out in this image (the photo was a little difficult, as the roundelle was only about 8-10 inches across and backlit in a dark room) there were four strings on the body, but six pegs in the head. The instrument does have a tailpiece, but if there is a trefoil or quatrefoil at the end, it cannot be made out. There are no frets drawn. There is a large plectum, though it looks to me more like a stripped quill plectum than the heavy arrow-shaped ones in other images. Still, I definitely would have to class this instrument as a citole, if something of an outlyer in exact morphology.

These two images show problems with the citole line. Left is the Ormesby Psalter, 14th Cent. from Bodleian Library in Oxford. Right is "An armed man seeking pleasure with various instruments of music" Dutch astrological treatise at the British Library, early 14th Century. The right image has four strings, like the citole/gittern. However the sickle pegbox, and pearshaped body harken back to the three stringed instruments from the Cantigas. This is NOT a citole, though it is where the gittern, with its bowl back and four strings is headed. The left image harkens back to the Lincoln cathedral image, which vaguely resembled the plucked fiddle. This too has fretted fingerboard, tailpiece, four strings, and arrow plectum. The neck also curves back sharply and thickly, hinting at the deep neck from the de Lisle Psalter image. It shows a kind of continuity between them both, and seems to link those trends in the unfixed morphology of the instrument.

Image from a 14th Century French Book of Hours. This is actually the image from which I took the border pattern for the sides of my recreation (see below). I later noticed that it actually contained a pair of citoles in the image, which I found rather amusing, so I added it here. The two angels on the top left and right are both portrayed as playing standard design citoles. Rounded back region with tail (here reduced to a ball-like extension), short wings, tailpiece, etc. The one on the left is portrayed with four strings, the one on the right with three (hard to make out in picture, I realize), which I ascribe to artist ease. Again, note the pairing with psaltery and fiddles, as was common in the literature.

In the 14th century, we might be able to determine the Citole form from GLOSSED ILLUSTRATIONS. First is from 14th century Brussels MS. Folio 39 has a gloss to the word lira saying "Lira est quoddam genus cithare vel est sitola alioquin deficeret hic instrumentum illud multum vulgare" - "Lira is a certain kind of cithara or is a citole; otherwise that very common instrument would be lacking here". Below it is a drawing of a four stringed instrument with a holy-leafed shaped body ending in a trefoil. It has a fingerboard extending onto the belly, and an arrow shaped plectum attached by a cord to the neck of the instrument. It also displays that strange heavy outcurved neck, so would seem to be consistant with the images that are its contemporaries. From that, we can generally assume that what we've identified as citoles so far are so.

A Paris MS of the 14th century is badly damaged, but under ultraviolet light shows an instrument entitled a "chitarra" - ch/c often confused, according to this author. This shows a "winged" holy-shaped instrument with four strings, a fretted fingerboard, a bridge and and endpeg. I've noted that as "CITOLE" in modern type. Another instrument farther up the page shows a sickle-shaped pegbox on a rounded backed instrument called a "gittern," thereof showing this was what the gittern then looked like. I've noted that as "GITTERN" in modern type. The instruments seem to strongly conform with the models shown in the images above. The gittern definitely seems to be developing the rounded body with the sickle head, and the citole the winged body with simple head, but odd neck.

Strangely, a single surviving instrument comes from this period. The original body dates from 1330, but which was converted to a violin in the 16th Century (when it was presented to the Earl of Leicester by Queen Elizabeth I, no less). The soundboard and bridge are 16th century modifications, but the unibody and neck are from the 14th century. It is now known as the Warwick Castle Gittern, just to be confusing, as it appears instead to be a model citole! Note the large open neck, the trefoil endpiece, and flattened back. It is considered a true treasure of the middle ages, and presently resides in the British Museum in the hall of Medieval treasures, just around the corner from Sutton Hoo and just next to the Isle of Man chess pieces. The first image shows the instrument as it was originally found. The second image is a cast of the original, with an attempt to remove the violin elements and see what the original morphology might have been. The remaining three images (in color) are pictures I took of it on display at the British Museum. The carving is absolutely amazing, and the end dragon is especially fun. I included the closs-up of the neck so that some of the detail could be made out. The fact that the corner is clipped where the neck joins with the soundboard suggests that the sides of the body were originally a little higher, and that the rounding of the soundboard might have occurred when it was converted to a violin (which has a rounded soundboard) rather than an original flatter soundboard.

The latest sculpture that might be of the form of the instrument appears to be the sculpture from the nave of Beverley Minster, early 15th century, As seen here. It harkens back again to the Parma Baptistry image with its simplicity, but lacks all the secondary shapes we have seen, including the wings, neck, etc. I would say this instrument is either a proto-lute, or an archaic attempt at one of the earlier instruments. It does not strike me as a citole, especially given the extreme form which it had reached by this point in time.

By this time, instead (the 15th century, that is), it has already started moving toward the cittern, which it becomes by the end of the century.

The citole is definite ancestor of the cittern. Thus aspects of the cittern can be backtracked into the citole. Lawrence Wright postulates this drawn progression. The heavy filled in neck with thumb hole of the earlier versions such as in the Warwick "gittern" lengthened into a slot (such as in the carving in Rheims Cathedral) and finally opens out, leaving a gap at the body end of the loop as in the Ormesby Psalter instrument. The resulting long hanger slowly shrinks until it becomes the traditional hook on the back of the head of the cittern. This combined with the common belief, within the period in question, that the citole was the origin of the cittern, point heavily in that direction. The cittern even has vestigal "wings" still left as small scrolls at the corners of the top of the body. See the image below.

Thus, this last image, from the Queen Mary Psalter, shows the instrument in its most ideal form. Flat body, fretted fingerboard, with wooden frets (or bone, etc.); four strings of metal (per Tinct.); a holy-leaf shaped body with slight waist, winged projections at the top of the body, and a small trefoil at the the end tip. All plucked with a arrow shaped plectum of bone or wood, sometimes of an elaborate design.

ISSUE OF STRINGS AND TUNING Possibly the most complicated issue in old instruments is what they were strung with and how they were tuned. Very few sources of information exist on the exact materials that any given instrument was strung with, and even when we do have sometimes very detailed descriptions of the instrument, we don't get much info by way of how it was tuned.

On the strings, modern reconstructions of the instrument have been done with both wire (silver, bronze) strings and with gut (usually sheep's gut, though ram, pig, and calf all show up in the medieval descriptions of "how to make gut"). The question of choice between these two comes down to two arguments. For metal strings, the lyre like instruments that preceeded the citole and from which it developed were metal strung, as were the citterns that descended from it. Continuity would suggest that the citole was metal strung. The heavy plectum depicted, along with the description of bone or wood frets would also suggest metal strings (heavy plectum not damaged by sharper strings, and tied gut frets not cut by them). Tinctoris' description above from "De Inventione et Usu Musicae" from 1487 speaks of four metal strings. The lateness of his date, however, makes it a harder to guess if it was always strung so - he is speaking of an instrument that he considers archaic at his time, but at a time when the metal strung cittern is already appearing (the re-entrant tuning he suggests for his cetula is more reminiscent of a renaissance cittern than a medieval instrument). However, generally speaking, the only instruments ever described as being metal strung in the middle ages are harps (including lyres, cithara, and the Irish, Scottish, and Welsh harps) and psalteries. All the lute-like instruments, including the proto-lutes, fiddles, etc., are all specifically described as being gut strung, with tied gut frets (or no frets). There is one specific reference made by Jean de Brie in his Le Bon Berger of 1379, a little closer in time to the heyday of the citole, which states that gut strings are best for "vielles, harpes, rothes, luthz, quiternes, rebecs, choros, almaduries, symphonies, cytholes, and other instruments that one makes to give sound by means of the fingers and of strings." This sweeping statement is the only direct mention of with what a citole might be strung during the time of its use, and almost, because of its broad encompas, may not be trusted (for example, there were wire strung harps and rothes, though not in the geographic region where he lived). But given that this is the only evidence that we have, I think that we are stuck with a situation that could go either way. For my reconstruction, I am chosing to go the way of gut, partially because I think it is probably more accurate to an earlier period instrument, and partially because its the sound I want from the instrument.

On tuning, we have two authors that give up potential hints. The anonymous author of the 14th Century Summa Musicae notes that fingerboard stringed instruments "are tuned in the consonances of octave, fourth and fifth, and that by putting down their fingers the players of these make tones and semitones for themselves." Thus we might see the instrument tuned in alternating 4th and 5ths, or in 5ths, or in octaves, such as g d g' d' or as d a d' g. This produces easy drone style chording that was popular at the time. Jerome of Moravia, writing in the late 13th century, discusses a similar style of tuning for fiddles, and he provides several tuning options for the 5-string fiddle using very similar structuring. Given this, an "open tuning" for the citole - something like the g d g' d' - would be appropriate, as opposed to a mandolin like tuning (or violin like) of g d a' e'. We also know that it was fairly commonplace to retune the instrument into the key and structure of individual songs, so a specific fixed tuning isn't truly necessary, but this at least gives us a point of reference.

MY RECREATION So, gathering from all the variations above, we can compile a sort of summary of forms that I can work from to do my recreation of the instrument.

The consistant elements of the instrument appear to be the fretted neck, a central rosette, a tailpiece of some kind, a bridge, some sort of projections at the shoulders of the instrument, and four strings running the length of the instrument, fixing to an endpeg or tailpiece, and to pegs in a pexbox. The Parma sculpture, which has been used as the basis of most recreations I've seen, is only vaguely typical. It does not demonstrate the waisting evident in practically all other versions of the instrument. The Exeter Cathedral version shares that seeming atypical feature, perhaps because of the simplicity of the overall sculpture. I don't think a "representative" instrument could be directly based on either, though they of course add to the overall impression/morphology. I would also like to represent the instrument in its heyday, around 1300, so the Parma version (the earliest form/date) also seems a bit out of the direct running.

I have decided to kind of average the Cantigas, the Strasbourg, 1310 English MS, and 14th Cent. Paris MS forms into a kind of sampled final lines. As the rebec I made was a peasant style instrument (very simple lines and no decoration), and as the one surviving example of the instrument (the Winchester Gittern) is extremely ornate almost to the point of absurdity (and even dates to 1300 or so), I have decided to make this a more elaborate instrument, with more rich decoration. I have found and acquired tools for some detail work, and have found a supplier of legal ivory and mammoth ivory, so I plan on doing a richly inlaid instrument, with some carving and decorative work. The widest piece of spruce I can get for the soundboard is 20cm wide (to keep it in one piece), so that fairly determines the baseline dimensions (20cm wide!). The final finished plans are below. For those interested, you may click on the image to get the hi-rez printable version, which should print at 1/2 scale (though a ruler is provided on the image to scale it appropriately). That file is large (like 900K) so it may take a while to download.

As I plan it now, the bridge, tailpiece top add, and inlays on the corner trefoils will all be ivory. The carved head will be added on as a separate piece, but will be carved out of the yellow cedar I'm using for the body (from the cutoff scrap). I will probably inlay the face, or something like that. The frets in the original were to be wood or bone - I will continue to use the ivory for them. I conveniently found a program to calculate fret spacings for a chromatic scale of any length, so that is what the fret spacing is based on - it is chromatic, as opposed to the probable period diatonic. Also, the backplate, much as in other instruments, will probably also be decorated. This will either be an inlaid pattern of holly leaves (echoing the shape of the instrument), or some kind of acanthus vines. I will put up that design when I have a chance to work more with the ivory for the inlay, and see what is realistically possible. There is also a good possibility I may carve a pattern of leaves into the sides of the instrument (wrapping around the back curve), but that design has yet to be exactly worked out.

So we now start with the block of wood. In this case, I've chose a nice block of yellow cedar that I acquired from NW Wood at a very reasonable price. It is close grained for a nice dense piece and good stiffness, but is significantly softer than the rock maple I used for the rebec, and I feel a need for something a little softer to work in for the intricate carving necessary in this piece. If it turns out that this is TOO soft, I will try to again get a maple block, but I'm hoping this will work. The pure untouched block is here:

First, I draw the body plan on the wood.

Second, the hollowing out of the body cavity. This is easier to do first, when the block isn't rounded or having pointy bits on it - a lesson I learned from the rebec. Unlike with the rebec, I am not concerning myself with using only "non-power tools", so I will be drilling out a good portion of this with a drill as follows: I drilled out a mosaic of holes over the area to be hollowed out, using a drill bit that I had put a kind of stopper on to keep it from going in too deeply. This could have also been achieved by using a drill press - but I only have a mini drill press that would not take a bit any bigger than 1/8 inch, and wanted to work a little larger than that. These holes are 3/8 of an inch. This took about an hour and a half, between drawing out the mosaic and drilling the holes. One thing with working with the yellow cedar - the entire house smelled of cedar for two days after doing this! Next, I took the scoop chisel to it and whacked out the inbetween spaces. Since the wood is already "cut" at the drill holes, its easy to take out large chunks quickly, simply snapping them out. Also this wood is a LOT softer than the maple I used for the rebec (and for the vihuela neck and head, which I'm also doing presently and kicking myself for not using the cedar for), so it works much more quickly and easily. This picture shows how much I was able to cut out in one evening's work. The remaining bits, including right-angling the rest of the sides took a bit more work and about three more sessions of whacking at it with the chisel, but the final roughed out hole can be seen here. Before sanding it down and working out the area of the trefoils, I intend to cut out the instrument from the block. That way I can thin the walls with better control.

Third, I cut the body out from the block of wood with a hand saw and a coping saw (the scroll saw I have won't get through the almost 3 inch thick wood of the body - its just a little too thick). Unfortunately, in the process, disaster strikes! There is an internal crack in the wood, which emerges as I cut the wood out. I have it separated out here to show it (held apart with a screw). Bummer. Well, back to the starting block.

As of this point, I have acquired another block of wood (actually two, in case this happens again) to begin work again. This block is eastern maple, and is a bit harder than the cedar, but no where near as hard as the tiger maple of the rebec. In a recent trip to England where I got to look at a couple of originals and reproductions (see the Warwick Castle Gittern photos above, for example), I have decided to redesign the instrument a little bit. First, I am thinning it down from three inches thick to just over two inches thick in the body. Partially done for ascethetic reasons, partially because almost all of the examples of reproductions I've seen so far have been only about 2 inches deep, and partially because it makes sawing the thing that much easier. I've also decided that the trefoil corner designs are more abnormal than standard, and have decided to square them off more, something like an averaging of the Queen Mary Psalter rounded corners and the 14th cent. Paris MS drawing. The trefoil design will still appear in the inlay.

Here is the new happy maple block. It is eastern maple, measures 22 3/4 inches long by 8 3/4 inches wide by 2" thick, and weighs a whopping 10 1/2 pounds! I sawed a corner off of it to see if it was as hard as the tiger maple from which the rebec was made; it proved softer, but still a lot harder than the cedar. Still it was workable, so I began.

Step 1: draw out the pattern on the wood. I had to sand off the sealant that was on the wood to get a good look at the grain. I tried to let the grain pattern of the wood dictate the orientation of the instrument. The large whorls I tried to roughly center the body-cavity on, and where the grain draws thinner I aimed the neck. Note also the more squared off corners as I was mentioning earlier.

Next we draw the mosiac to drill out the holes. It makes it easier to do quickly. I don't necessarily follow it exactly, but it acts as a decent guide. The blocks are 1/2 inch squares.

Then I take a 1/2" drill bit and add a "stopper" onto it, as seen here. I'm only using a hand drill, so I use this method to keep from drilling too deeply into the body. The depth is set at about 1 5/8 inches or so. The stopper is made with cloth tape.

Step 2: drill out the holes as best I can. The maple is definitely a lot harder than the cedar. This took three sessions of drilling, as the drill super-heated very quickly trying to bore through the wood, and I think by the end the drill bit had been dulled somewhat, as it seemed to be chopping though the wood rather than slicing through it. Nonetheless, it has been accomplished. My wife claimed that the smell here was of chocolate chip cookies baking.

And yes, it makes a lot of saw dust! We decided not to give the maple pile to the bunny... Here you can see the instrument in total with the drilled holes.

Next comes carving out that space cleanly. For this, I used a couple of tools. The primary gouging was done by a 1/2" straight edge scoop gouge shown below. As you can see, it has seen a lot of use, and the handle has been practically beaten to death, thus the tape wrap. For the smaller corner areas, the V scoop gouge proved effective. The most difficult portion of the hollowing out was actually getting the back and front walls vertical, as this meant direct cutting perpendicular to both directions of the grain of the wood. The larger 1/2" scoop was just dulling itself trying to cut into that, so I used a small 3/8" curved (about a 20 curve)chisel hammered straight down to try to shape the walls. That is the one below. With it see my happy new mallet, of really hard maple. The marks you see on it are just scrapings of the wax that coats it - the wood itself hasn't been dented yet! Works MUCH better than the normal hammer I was using before.

And the finished hollowed space. I've run a plane over the floor of the hollow to basically smooth it, and used a rotary tool sander to smooth out the side walls, resorting to sandpaper in a couple of corners. The floor has been left about 3/8" thick. About 1/8" of that will be lost to smoothing and leveling the bottom, and at least another 1/8" to the relief carving that will be done on the bottom of the instrument.

Next is to cut out the rough shape from the block of wood. For this I am using my trusty Stanley Saw, shown below. Cutting through the maple is tough, harder than the cedar, but still easier than the tiger maple of the rebec. Also, this saw is a lot better than the one I was using to cut the rebec block. This is with the first couple of gross cuts done.

The remainder of the outer body shaping was done with a combination of the big saw (cutting out the indents on the sides), coping saw (used mostly around the tail trefoil), chisels (straight edge and curved edge to shape various bits of the sides), my heavy handled file (to straighten out the wings, and to do final shaping all around), and a small amount of rotary tool work (mostly to clean up the tail trefoil and the indents between the neck and wings).

These two images show the more or less final outer shape of the body. The angled view shows the tail trefoil going all the way to the bottom of the instrument. The original plans had it only going half-way down, but I think it looks better this way, and the tail trefoil of the Warwick gittern was the full thickness of the body, so its probably more accurate. I've started thinning out neck - still needs some thinning out from the images that are here. But the pegbox has its fully rounded shape, the wings are clean and crisp, and the curve of the body is in its final form. The walls have been left a little thick, especially at the tail end, to accommodate the relief carving that will be done on the sides.

The next bit on the body is to fully shape the neck and the pegbox. The pegbox starts out as a thick cylinder with a stubby tail pointing back toward the body. I need to carve out more space in the "hook" of the tail, enough to fully get my thumb in there (as that is the described method of play) easily. The neck also needs to be significantly thinned out (mostly with chisels and the big file). Next the back of the pegbox needs to be hollowed out from behind. This is done 1.) to lighten the instrument significantly and 2.) so that the pegs don't have to get through two solid inches of wood - rather only a half inch or so. Images of that will follow shortly.

Meanwhile, I also did a quick test to see if carving the sides was feasible. I hadn't tried carving the hard maple yet to see what can of detail could be done, so before I wrecked the main block, I decided to do an experimental bit on some of the scrap blocks. This is a piece that was cut from the neck area, and is about 2" tall. I tried roughly carving out a fairly standard ivy leaf pattern (much as shows up on the borders of contemporary manuscripts), and it was a lot easier than I was expecting. I did a little bit of experimental binding on the top (of ebony) just to sample that a bit, and that also proved rather successful. So the instrument will indeed be carved on the body sides and back.

This is the roughing out of the neck and pegbox complete. The neck has been fully thinned and rounded somewhat. The hook has been sliced out and curls slightly back toward the neck. This was done with a combination of my new mid-sized chisels (more on them a little later when I do the side/bottom carving), the heavy file (which actually removes a surprisingly large amount of material quickly), and a some work with the dremel sander bits, which helped smooth out the hook joint and the hard angle where the neck and body meet. The hollowing of the pegbox was rather successful, and was done in a similar fashion to the hollowing of the body. I drilled a series of holes in the space, leaving about 1/2-5/8 of an inch at the bottom for the pegs to penetrate. Then chisels were used to chop out a fair amount of the wood in the interspace between the drilled holes. However the narrow deep space was hard to straighten the walls easily (not enough space to maneuvre with the chisels, so I resorted to the router attachment on the dremel to router the walls to straighten them (you can see a couple of the router ridges near the bottom on the photo). All this has yet to be sanded, of course, pending the surface carving.

Back on the other side of the instrument, with the neck shaping mostly finished, I was able to extend the body cavity forward toward the neck another 1/2 or so (removing more weight - yeah!), and decided that with the tail trefoil extending to the bottom of the body, I didn't need the back wall of the instrument to be quite so thick, so I thinned that down to the smooth curve of the rest of the walls (compair to the "outer body" image above to see the differences).

So now that the body has been fully roughed out, the detail surface carving can be added. Like the Warwick Castle Gittern above, instruments were often highly decorated in relief carving. For additional examples, I have here the Venus Rebec from 15th Century Venice from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (note particularly the side floral carvings), a lyra di Bracchio from approximately 1500 (present location unknown), with a wonderful greenman theme, and a 14th Cent. Italian Citerone from the Metropolitan Museum of NYC with a pair of lovers hidden amongst the elaborate greenery. I have decided to carve some designs on my instrument to make it more of a noble instrument.

In keeping the with the "holly leaf" theme, I've decided to decorate the instrument in a leaf theme. Several areas of the instrument will be carved: the back plate will bear a greenman design with leaf pattern around it, the sides curling up to the wings will have a leaf motif relief carved into them, the neck will have some leaves curling up it, and the endplates of the wings will have some leaf patterns carved in. I decided to try to mimic fairly directly existing historical patterns. To that end, I found the leaf border pattern from the 14th century French Book of Hours above, and a pleasent Greenman from LeMans Cathedral in France. Using as a reference point, I will draw up the designs to put onto the citole.

Here are the pencilled designs I plan to carve into the citole - perhaps went a bit overboard, but looks really nice to me. Wrapping around the curved sides is the leaf pattern from the Book of Hours. It will probably prove the toughest to carve, as the curved surface will be difficult to work with. One the back plate I have centered the greenman in the lower body - he's a variation of the LeMans greenman, but still has a strong resemblence. He is surrounded by swirling leaf patterns designed in the same mode as the leaves on the sides of the instrument. The neck has similarly been decorated with curling leaves stretching up the back of the neck. I plan to start on the neck, as it should be easiest bit to carve (grain is going with me, and even though slightly curved surface, there is little danger of carving too deeply).

Tools, tools and more tools! The images here are of the the medium, small and micro tools I'm using to do the carving. The files with the red handles are the medium files, used for some cleanup of edges and shaping of the body. The small metal files are used to do some cleanup and shaping of the small carving. There are also the micro-files (also red handled, but REALLY tiny - most only 1/16 of an inch across) that you'll see below with the rosette carving in the ivory. The black line in the image is one inch long, for scale.

There are also three sets of chisels. The large set is used to shape parts of the body (including the heal, neck etc.) and for gross removal of wood on the neck and sides carving areas. The dark handled small chisels are the primary carving tools (most are about 3-4 mm across) that I use to shape the forms. The light handled micro chisels (about 1-2 mm) are for working in the really tight corners, or for carving the lines. They also will help with the rosette carvings. The black line in the image is one inch long, for scale.

Here is the relief carved neck. Primary carving was done with the small chisels, additional finishing with the small and micro files. Final sanding will wait until I get the rest of the carving done (I only want to do one long sanding pass), as I also want to do a little dremel work on the peghead and the neck/body joint. Came out pretty well. Next up will be the back (the greenman).

In the interim, I've also been working ahead on some other parts and problems of the instrument. One very elaborate piece will be the ivory rose that is going on the front center. It will be bracketted at the corners with smaller ivory inlays. Here is the pattern (actual size 2.5 inches) to be used on the ivory rose - it is adapted (and simplified, if you can believe that) from a lute rose from about 1500. Next to it is the piece of antique elephant ivory that will be used to carve the rose. This was obtained from The Warther Museum, who sells legal ivory from cut up antique tusks, mostly to artisans (he also makes really amazing ships!). This piece is about 3 inches square or so, and about 1/8-3/16 inch thick. The next image is the pattern drawn onto the ivory. All the darker bits are to be removed. The next image shows the holes drilled out. This was done with tiny finger drills (picture to come), hand spun into the ivory to make all the holes. After this, the micro-files are used to shape each of the holes into the appropriate forms (next image shows this in process). The filing is very slow and tedious, and I tend to carry it around with the micro-files in my pocket and do the filing in little snippets while waiting for movies to start, waiting for trains, etc. Sort of like women used to do knitting. The whole rosette then was thinned down a bit, as it was too heavy at its original thickness for the soundboard and some of the smaller holes were actually smaller in diameter than the thickness of the ivory, which made for very difficult work. The fifth image shows it getting really close now, with a good portion of it now open space. As you can see, for a variety of reasons, I've altered the design a bit as I've gone along. The ultimate goal is to get a kind of lacy look. The final stage shows the finished rose.

Doing demos and such I went back to carving out the back of the decorated citole. The first stage of carving the back is now done - all the "background" area has been removed, and the back floor roughly leveled. This is done with the small chisels above, and took way too long. Next up is the carving of the raised bits into 3-dimensional relief, which hopefully shouldn't take nearly as long (actually did take less time).

Continuing the carving on citole one with the greenman. Carved in simple relief - the grain of the wood makes it a little difficult to make out, but that will change a lot when the finish is added. Started with the deepest cut areas (around the eyes, around the nose), and then worked mostly bottom to top. Again, this was done mostly with the small chisels, with smoothing via the medium files. Its about 1/8 - 3/16 inches deep. Next we carve all the leaves!

Rounding out all the leaves was rather tedious, involving beveling them with the chisels, and then filing the bevels into smooth rounded edges. This is the final back image. All of the leaves and vines have been finished. The final sanding will be done with the final pass of all of the body (not particularly looking forward to that...) The edges of the carved out area still need to be cleaned up a bit - I was debating between beveling them at about a 45 degree angle, or leaving them as harder right angles. The right angles seems more appropriate, I think.

Next part on Citole One is to the do the side carvings. The curves of the body sides make it a little more difficult, as its hard to get a surface to brace it against carefully when working (I tend to work either on a small coffee table, or literally with it on my lap on the floor, not having access to or space for a proper workbench), but the start shown here proved easier than I was expecting.

The side carvings are now done. The top image shows one of the finished sides. The relief carving follows the curve around to the narrowest part of the waist, and buts almost right against the tail. The second image shows that the side carving is definitely shallower than the back carving (also shows how rounded the leaves/vines are on the back). The walls need to be rather thin in the final instrument to keep the weight of the block down for good resonance. The third image shows the little leaf curl that was carved into the outer face of the wings of the instrument.

Now that the carving on the body is done, the floor and walls of the cavity have to thinned out to about 1/8 of an inch, and made sure that the walls meet the floor at right angles (rather than scooped angles they presently do). First the floor had to be dropped about 3/8-1/2 an inch, which is getting increasingly more difficult as the wood is drying and aging (harder and more brittle, and chipping my chisels). In the image here on the back wall you can see the chisel marks showing how much farther down it had to go. I've also started thinning out the walls (esp. visible on the left in this picture).

Having finished the decorative carving on the back and sides, time to move onto the peg head. I abandoned the idea of attaching a additional piece of wood for an overhanging head as both not true to historical instrument construction, and also because it would look attached and out of place. Practically it also would overweight the head, and make holding the instrument awkward. So instead I decided to continue the relief carving around the peghead. Since dragon/animal heads seemed to be the norm for the end of the head, I carved a small dragon face into the end of the peghead. The curling vines found on the other parts of the sides were then continued around the curve of the head.

On the top of the peghead (where the pegs will stick out), I need to lower the level of the floor a bit so that the endnut could be held in place by the downward tension of the strings. So I decided to give the top of the peghead a little design, as per the original plans. This will probably be taken down a bit farther and evened out a little more when I get the fingerboard in place, but I wanted it at least started.

At the other end of the body was the little tail trefoil, which was left barely roughed out. I didn't want to finish it until last, as I tend to handle the body a great deal while doing the carving, and the pointy bits on this would have been annoying to hold. But now the rest is done, I finished it off, beveling the faces and raising the bottom end up a bit. What is not immediately evident from these pictures is that the bottom surface is actually angled upwards, but the perspective of the image doesn't show that very well..

FINALLY, getting away from the body block to the other parts. This is the soundboard. It starts off as a piece of Carpathian white spruce (a master grade piece, very nice, from LMII. You will note the positions where the tailpiece will end, and where the bridge will ultimately go. I've decided not to inlay the other decorations on the soundboard, as I think it will make it too heavy. The large central rosette will be the ivory one above. But instead of the inlaid flower patterns I'd originally planned, I've decided to use four smaller rosettes carved directly into the board. Their locations can be seen marked out on the piece (this is actually the back). Next to cut out the board and start work on the rosettes.

This shows the rosettes in process. The upper left has had the pilot holes drilled with the micro finger drills, which is the first step. From there, I take the micro-files and start opening up the holes to shape, as can be seen in the upper right side. The two lower rosettes have been completed. This is slow and tedious work, as not only do the rosettes have to be internally symmetrical, but they have to be lined up as close as possible to their opposing duplicate. I did encounter an interesting problem with this spruce. The dark grain wood is VERY much harder than the light grain wood, so there is a marked tendency of files/drills/etc. to skip off the hard bands into the soft ones, making the fine precision work even more slow.

The corner rosettes done, now turning to the central rosette. The ivory rose has been finished. It is going to be edged by a strip of ebony and then inset into the soundboard. The strip of ebony first is steam bent into shape using a bending iron, and allowed to dry overnight taped into shape (it is slightly smaller than the rosette, but overlaps at least half of its length. This turned out to be a "learning" experience, as I hadn't done much bending before, and the ebony is quite brittle, so this took two tries to get correct.

The rosette has now been fitted into the ebony edging and the ebony sanded smooth so the jointing isn't visible. Now comes the careful process of cutting a hole in the soundboard just exactly to shape.

The rosette fitted into the soundboard. There is still a bit of leveling that needs to be done carefully with scrapers to bring the level of the rosette flush with the soundboard. The differing hardnesses of the ivory and spruce make sanding impractical until final smoothing.

In the interim (there is no picture here as nothing really to see) is the long tedious process of scraping, filing and chiseling the carved portions of the body smooth and clean, so that the rough chisel marks are removed where-ever possible. It is long and slow, but the new scrapers make some if it easier, and I've discovered the flat chisel blades can be used as a kind of scraper. One change was made to the body - the tail trefoil was thinned top to bottom to take up slightly less than half of the body width, rather than the 3/4 it previously had, as I've decided to loop the tail-rope around it entirely rather than cut a hole through it. Otherwise all that clean-up is finally done!

Starting now on the other parts at last. This is the brace that will be attached under the soundboard to help support it. It is carved of the very light wide grain spruce, and shaped to an inverted T cross-section (see small insert). It will be positioned about 1.5 inches behind the bridge on the underside of the soundboard at its widest point.

Anticipating the assembly of the body, I've been experimenting with different ways to cut the channel for the edge binding. For Citole 2 below I used a chipping method by hand with the mini-chisels. While that worked, it was horrifically slow, and ran the perpetual danger of cracking the edge. The maple is significantly more brittle at this point (being long aged now unfortunately) than the cherry of that instrument, and I'm not sure that I want to take the chance with that method. The "normal" ways of doing this are one of two options. First, a violin purfling cutter going around the edge and then chipping out with a sharp knife on the side. This is only mildly more efficient than my first way, and still runs the danger of cracking the very thin edge. Alternatively, it is routed out. My previous attempts at routing had been not horribly successful, as I found it difficult without a table mount to control the router, especially around the sharp corners. However, I discovered a piloted binding router bit at Stewart McDonald luthier's store, which proved promising. I made a mock body to try it on with my dremel router attachment, including sharp corners, soft corners and a curve out of a spare block of cherry wood (cut off from instrument #2 I think). I cut this edge binding channel in about 10 minutes. Very clean. Extremely easy. Guess how I'm going to do the real instrument...

The top fitting are now being tackled. The tailpiece was cut from a block of American holly wood. The original intention had been to carve out the design on the tailpiece that you see drawn onto it. You can also see the placement for the holes.

The fingerboard piece was cut from the same block of holly as the tailpiece (they actually are the same color, but had to get closer to photograph the tailpiece and the flash whited it out a bit). The frets will be cut from ebony.

It is here that I decided that I didn't want to carve the tailpiece and leave the fingerboard plain. The elaborate carving all over the body made the top of the instrument suddenly look very simple. I initially had planned to edgebind the top, including the fingerboard, with ebony binding. Then I decided it might look interesting to do the same with the tailpiece - edge it in the ebony as well. With the high contrast of the white woods and ebony binding, however, the tailpiece carving would barely be visible. I also initially considered it impractical to relief carve the fingerboard, and just carving the tailpiece seemed not sufficiently decorative. So I started to go overboard, and inlay the leaf and vine pattern into the tailpiece, which would in turn allow me to inlay a similar design into the fingerboard. This involves taking the ebony wood I have (a bass guitar fingerboard is what I am using), and cut it into two thin plates to try to then cut out the inlay pieces.

However, as often happens when working through this stuff, I did a little bit of test, and decided that 1) the inlay was going to take forever 2) it didn't mesh well with the relief carving elsewhere on the instrument and 3) that I couldn't find any pre-Renaissance examples of inlaid instruments, but there were many relief carved ones. SO, after due consideration, I decided instead to relief carve it as originally intended. The tailpiece and the lower, unfretted portion of the fingerboard were thus decorated using a very similar pattern to the rest of the instrument. The fingerboard piece is actually only a minor variant of the scroll work over the greenman's head on the back of the body.

Using the small chisels and files, and the little finger drills, the tailpiece now has the surface carving and the string holes. The holes may need to be widened, especially the tail-gut holes, but I'll worry about that when it comes to stringing the instrument. Still haven't decided whether I'm going to add the ebony edging on the tailpiece. I probably will, but am going to make sure I have enough to go around the whole body before wasting it here.

Cutting the ebony frets. The first step is to cut a thin flat piece out of the thick ebony fingerboard chunk I have. I ended up clamping it upright to a wooden chair back and using a fret saw to slowly cut down the piece. Took a very long time, as the wood is 3+ inches thick. That thin sheet is then sliced into a "comb" of equal width teeth, in this case six teeth (as there will be six frets). The teeth are then cut off, and equaled out into clean square cross-sections with the files. A good portion of the rest of this flat piece became the backing on the ivory rose on the Three Dimensional Art page, just so you know the remaining wood and effort into cutting it doesn't go to waste. It all gets used for something.

Carving the design and marking the frets onto the fingerboard. The functional string length will be 13.75 inches, and I used a fret calculator to set the spacing. The carving went through a number of designs before I realized I could match the back design pretty closely, and that tied in together well. Here you can see the first bits of cutting into the edges of the design.

Here are the final fingerboard piece all carved and leveled, with the slots for the frets widened to receive them, and the pile of frets. The second picture shows the gluing in of the frets (you can see the earlier sketches of the fingerboard designs below), "clamping" them down with handweights.

Turning now to the soundboard, here is the clamping (again using handweights) of the brace to the back of the soundboard. You can see the marking for where the bridge will be (on the other side, of course). Anybody want some free Buffy videos? We have all the DVD's now...

With the brace dry, the soundboard is then carefully lined up with the body and glued down. Again, using handweights as my clamps.

The soundboard edge is cleaned up more or less flush to the body. The neck is then hollowed out (to lighten the instrument and make it not quite so nose heavy) in preparation for attaching the fingerboard. Normally I'd have probably just thinned the whole neck, but the carved designs make that not an option.

The fingerboard is glued down, once again clamped by the handweights. Then the edges are cleaned up all around the fingerboard as well, being very careful to not chip off the frets.

The next task is to cut the edge for the edge binding on the top. After having done several experiments (see above), I settled on the dremel with a router bit attachment. I cut a scrap piece of pine wood to act as an outer brace to make sure that the dremel wouldn't tilt. The whole body was clamped to the table by a C-clamp attached to the pegbox. It was difficult to make sure that very soft soundboard didn't chip badly, but overall it went well.

Showing the finished cut edgebinding ledge. You will note that at the tail, where the tail-loop will pass over the edge of the soundboard, I've cut a slightly larger ledge to fit a larger piece of the ebony. I've had the problem of the tailgut cutting into the soundboard before, and took note of Marco Salerno's solution to that problem - inlaying a small rectangle of hardwood where the tailgut crosses over the edge. I will be doing the same here.

This image shows the process of steam bending the edgebinding into shape. I have a violin-body style bending iron (more or less just a metal rod that gets hot, to about 220 degrees or so). The idea is that you wet down the wood, and then the softened and swelled grains are able to be better manipulated. The steaming further softens them, and helps to "set" them when they dry. Leather works in a similar way (though if you get leather too hot, it actually polymerized, and you end up with brittle plastic). However, in practice I ran into several problems here. First, the original edgebinding that I had gotten to put on was solid ebony about 3/32nd inch thick, which nicely matched the ledge-cutter width. Unfortunately, the practical right angle turn at the backside of the wings proved to be too severe to bend the ebony into shape. After snapping the pieces about 10 times, I decided this was impractical. So I used progressively thinner pieces of ebony until I got one that I could bend without snapping into the severe curve. The problem with this was that the thickness that I was finally able to get to shape was too thin for the ledge, and meant that I now had to laminate the edgebinding. This meant cutting and bending twice the number of pieces, and then gluing them together. So I set about doing this. Each side of the instrument had four pieces - the short curve from the neck to the peak of the wing, the two short straight lengthes on the outer edges of the wing, and the long single piece that goes from the back corner of the wing to the tailpiece. Each had to separately fitted to its space and bent to shape. The alternating process of fitting it to the body, steaming to shape, refitting to body, etc. had a somewhat amusing side-effect - I accidentally steamed off the soundboard of the citole! It was sitting too close to the bending iron, and the repeated application of steaming hot wet pieces of wood eventually undid the glue (which, technically, is how the luthier glue is supposed to respond). So, after a break of cleaning off the top and top edge of glue, and re-gluing the soundboard back onto the body, I was able to finally (more carefully this time around) finish shaping the remaining bits of the edgebinding.

The edgebinding layers then had to be glued together. Using piles of clothespins and bear clamps, I was able to glue the two layers of the edgebinding together. Unfortunately I could only scrounge enough clamps to do one piece at a time, so this took a little while. You can see here the last piece going together - the rest are scattered on the table next to it.

Next up is attaching the edging to the body. Each piece now had to be exactly fitted to its location, ends cut to exact length and the corners beveled so they met at clean angles. Then each piece in order (as they have to be fitted against each other) has to be glued into place. The first problem encountered was that the glued laminates proved not to be as flexible as the thick wood, so a little very careful reshaping had to be done (remembering this time that steaming it would functionally undo the glue holding them together). Once that issue was solved, the second problem was how to hold them under the slight tension necessary into place while the glue dried. Obviously clamps on the odd surfaces would be very difficult, and the soft wood of the soundboard could be easily damaged. The solution I came up with was cloth tape. The tape isn't horribly sticky, but sticks to itself well. As a result, it doesn't mark even the soft wood of the soundboard, but can hold things under tension. Starting with the front curves, I attached each piece. Sometimes the taping got a little elaborate (the large side pieces - my wife likes to refer to this as the "bondage citole"), but it all worked.

After the glue had dried, I took a very sharp knife (like an x-acto blade) and trimmed down the edges flush with the top of the soundboard. Done very slowly as carefully, as the very thin pieces snagged grain easily, and glue layer between them was quite hard. Became a balance of force and control. After that was a exceptionally tedious process of going around the whole body and cleaning up the sides to be flush with the edge binding. This was done with the scrapers and the files. I also took the opportunity to straighten out and better balance the top curves and points on the wings of the body, as they were a little angled from straight.

Two last little bits of ebony had to be added. First was the little block at the tail to keep the tailgut from cutting into the soundboard. I used a piece cut from the same piece that I made the frets from, as the wood was conveniently the exact same thickness necessary. The other piece was optional, but I decided to add it anyway. I decided to add an edgebinding to the exposed end of the fingerboard to "complete" the black line around the body that the edgebinding created. I had debated edging the fingerboard, but two problems argued against it. First, the edges of the design at the base of the fingerboard were too thin to be thinned further for an edgebinding. Second, the neck itself would have had to be thinned, which potentially would have affected the carving on its underside. Also I didn't like the look that much, so decided entirely against it. However I did like the little endbinder for the fingerboard, so that was made from a single thickness of the ebony edgebinding.

The finished binding all in place now. All that is left now on the body of the instrument is final sanding and applying the finish.

The tailpiece also was to acquire edgebinding. Four straight pieces of the thick ebony edging were cut and glued into place. Here you can see them having just dried. After that they are carved down to the surface level of the tailpiece, and sanded all around to smooth out and round the corners. Finally, the tailpiece has its holes widened (you can see two of the lower right holes have been started) with the needle files. I'll have a shot of the finished tailpiece in a bit.

Turning next to the pegs. Did about 20 or 30 sketches of peg designs, and decided on a kind of oak leaf shaped one as the final choice. Here you see the pair of holly wood bits that will be carved into the pegs, with the spaces for the pegs marked out.