The Erard Project

For those readers interested in technical drawings, here is a section of the instrument through the highest treble bar. Many details, of course, are missing, as this is a work in progress. This will be part of the complete drawing of the piano. I apologize for the poor quality of the preview on this page. You can download a high quality .pdf of this drawing from the data page of my Erard site. Readers interested in native file formats, .dwg, .dxf should contact me directly.

Constructing a pattern of the long bridge by offsetting, using an acrylic disc. The diameter of the disc is not important, you make one offset, trim to the line, and then offset back. Below; cutting the pattern for the bass bridge, the material is 3mm 5 ply Baltic Birch. The bass bridge proper, was sawn from solid Beech, the long bridge is two vertical laminations of Beech. Neither piece is cut on the quarter, which I would normally prefer. The bridge patterns laid out on the sound-board pattern, and aligned using the fixtures made earlier. The sound-board pattern is made of the same stuff as the bridge patterns. Notice that the holes for the bolts are very oversize, they are also not strictly concentric to the bolts. These will be made smaller with overlapping wooden washers, and aligned with the bolts in place. Some Spruce (below) for sound-boards. Wide stuff on the bottom is around 12", 300mm. I will split these on the band saw, two, or three ways, to end up with 6 x ...