We spent the better part of January and February building 22 harps in our Minnesota workshop. We got them all finished, carefully packed, and crated up for shipment to Sweden. The harps arrived in good order and we have been busy getting the harps ready for delivery.
The harps arrive in two pieces - the body or soundbox, and the neck/pillar unit. After unpacking and sorting all the harps, we then install all the hardware. We put the eyelets in the holes in the soundboard and install the tuning pins and bridge pins in the neck.
The neck/pillar assembly is now ready to be attached to the body. To start, the neck/pillar assembly is held in place with just a couple of screws and gravity. Then we install the strings and start to bring them up to pitch. The string tension is what really locks the neck/pillar assembly in place.
We have to tune the harp a few dozen times before the strings become stable enough to install the sharping levers. It takes a few hours per harp to install the levers and get them regulated.
Once the levers are installed, we tune the harp a few more times and it is ready to go!
