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ALAMI
Oud Junkie
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Thanks guys for asking.
The project is still on, I almost finished the main part of the mold and I am tracing the ribs placement which appears to be very complicated.
The mold is now made of slices of 3cm thick that are not glued together, it looks like a solid mold but it can be easily transformed into a toast rack
mold as the slices are not glued together, Nazih was reluctant on using a solid body, he prefers a toast-rack, I worked on it keeping both options
open.
The real difficulty where I got stuck is the bottle-neck-block. Carving it from one piece didn't work it is too much for someone with my in-experience
in woodworking.
Next week I'll be seeing Nazih to take the project to the next level.
He Melbourne , Frank Ghery !!! Funny and flattering, yeah why not adapting the design into a oud concert hall ?
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katakofka
Oud Junkie
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Congra Alami, wish you a success with this idea
You remind me of my brother. He was doing a PhD in architecture and came out to a relation between music and dimensions. It didn't come to my
attention that PHI would be involved into sound quality. I don't recall any music theoriciens (pythagore e.g) that used PHI for sounds and waves. Do
you know any?
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Jameel
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Cool. That looks so organic. Almost like a piece of some exotic fruit. I want to eat it....
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gilgamesh
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Yess, this cool oud is going to seem including a large part of life, like an animal sleeping into a wood structure. I like to imagine that some
miracle sound will blossom from it
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nayoud
Oud Junkie
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Hi All
This is a very interesting topic Alami ! Chapeau !
I was just in touch with Dr. Ibrahim Karim via email http://www.biogeometry.com/ on a similar topic.
Dr.Karim is a pioneer in Egypt on bio and sacred geometry and this includes how the design of musical instruments relate to the "true" cosmic scale.
I'm not into new age thinking, but I know that according to Alfarabi these issues were important in music instrument design to a great
extent in the distant past, and that includes the oud.
I'm currently reading a book published in 1943 on that topic by Alain Danielou with the title of "Introduction to the Study of Musical Scales".
Will get back to the forum if I get any info that might be useful from Dr. Karim
Hisham
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jdowning
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Your novel approach to construction of the mold is a great example of 'lateral thinking' ALAMI - it seems so obvious! This is a method that can be
applied to all molds of complex geometry - including lute molds of 'flattened' section.
Carving the mold as a 'solid' means that the geometry of the bowl can be readily (albeit with a lot of carving work) and accurately created -
something that would have been much more difficult - if not impossible - with a 'toast rack' style of mold.
Converting the 'solid' mold to a 'toast rack' mold - at the same time preserving the geometrical accuracy - means that advantage can then be taken of
the open mold construction. The advantage over a solid mold is that it helps reduce the risk of the ribs being inadvertently glued to the mold due to
fewer points of contact between rib and mold surface. Location of the bulkheads should be such as to provide more support in areas of the mold where
there is a greater amount of longitudinal curvature of the ribs - usually in the area around the bottom end of the bowl for more conventional bowl
geometry.
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SamirCanada
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what is going on with this oud??
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ALAMI
Oud Junkie
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It is one tough question Samir,
I thought I finished the mold made of 18 blocks of 3 cm thickness each for a total length og 54 cm.
I handed the mold to Nazih and left it up to him to choose if he wants to use it as solid mold or toast rack mold along with 1/1 blueprints of each
part of the design.
When Nazih started to mount the mold he discovered that it is only 52 cm long instead of 54 : a 2 cm difference in length but the width and the depth
are exactly as in the plans,
It means that the proportions became corrupted and the mold is not in the real phi proportions.
What I did wrong was in fact is that I used 10mm thick MDF and assumed that when they say 10 mm it is really 10 mm and that 54 slices of MDF would be
54 cm.
This error could have been avoided if I were not thinking like a computer.
Now I have either to rework the mold from scratch or readapt it taking 52 cm as starting point and do reverse (phi)proportional - calculations or use
a prototyping machine (3D printing) a service that I was unable to find locally in Lebanon and the European service bureaus I emailed didn't even
bother to answer.
And then it was the summer and I got lazy (you know.....those mediterranean genes....)
Thanks Sam for giving it a kick, I really should put this back on track.
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zalzal
Oud Junkie
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Probably arriving after the battle but there is a link with infos which can be of interest here
http://www.catnaps.org/islamic/geometry.html
It is a long page but with lot of drawings, diagrams, photos, comments.
Inside this page there are comments on fibonacci, golden mean etc with another link on phi
http://www.earthmatrix.com/ancient/phi.html
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DaveH
Oud Junkie
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Hey Alami - could you not just glue 1mm veneer onto the blocks? You could either cover the whole of one side of each block (expensive, especially as
can be hard to get cheap types of wood in veneer form) or just use a couple of strips as spacers, which would leave 1mm gaps between the blocks -
shouldn't be a problem. That way, with 18 blocks if you glue veneer onto one side of each block you're only coming up 2mm short. If you need it to be
exactly 54cm, you could coat both sides of two of the blocks - this will still mess up your proportions a little, but it seems a shame to chuck away
all that work for a couple of mm, and working by hand you're bound to have some small errors anyway.
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ALAMI
Oud Junkie
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You have a point Dave.
At this point I have nothing to loose with this mold. Instead of veneer I am thinking of getting 1 mm aluminium plates to place between the blocks,
they are light weight, cheap, easy to get and 1mm is 1mm no humidity or imprecision risks.
Then I will have to recheck the outer curvature and do some sanding.
Looks like a good and simple idea, thanks man, really.
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DaveH
Oud Junkie
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no probs. Aluminium sounds sensible. Good luck and please give my greetings to Al Ustadh ras baalbeki!
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DaveH
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Come to think of it, maybe 3 steel washers per section would also do the trick?
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jdowning
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Here is some new information which relates to the discussion in the first part of the thread concerning the apparent faulty perspective of the lute
depicted in the early 16th C painting "The Ambassadors" by Hans Holbein.
Rather than repeat details of my observations, I attach a FoMRHI pre-publication article for information of those who may be interested.
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ALAMI
Oud Junkie
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Very Interesting, John.
Modeling de Zwolle lute geometry in 3D should be simple, but I am not sure if it is possible to simulate the distortion of the camera obscura, I'll
have to look it (the pdf you linked to could be very helpful), In fact a 3D software can represent accurately both orthogonal and perspective views of
a volume. Let me know if it can help in your article.
BTW, the Golden Mean Oud project is finally back on track, I'll be posting soon the developments.
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jdowning
Oud Junkie
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Thanks for the information about the software ALAMI. I shall modify the text of the article to include this information (and remove my
misinformation!) prior to publication.
If a high tech solution is possible - to work around the perspective distortion problem - that would be very interesting. Perhaps it could be done by
using the two vanishing points on the lute and the 'curved' strings to create three images with their different vanishing points and then, using the
'collage' technique that Hockney suggests was used by Holbein, blend together the separate pegbox, neck and soundboard/bowl images to see if that will
replicate Holbein's distorted representation of the lute?
Glad to see the project is back on track.
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ALAMI
Oud Junkie
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This project was on hold for a while due to some technical bottlenecks coupled with a lack of free time.
As explained in earlier posts, the mold was done using slices cut on a CNC router driven by computer files. Due to inconsistent wood thickness (and my
total inexperience in woodworking) the mold ended up 4% shorter than it is supposed to be.
My original plan was to extract the flat ribs shapes from the finished mold by drawing lines directly through the markers that I kept on each slice.
Each 1 cm slice has a center which is the assymetry axis (and not the midpoint) and all angles from this axis to the sides of the ribs are equal. Once
the lines are drawn on the mold surface I'd have cut a paper or carton to the exact shape and I'd have extracted the individual flat shape of each of
the 21 ribs (they are all different). In short, a similar approach to what John did in his project (less the skill....of course).
The original plan failed due to the inaccurate mold and the first attempts to virtually "unbend" the ribs by maths revealed to be too theoretical as
the nature of wood was not taken into consideration, roughly: pitch and bank can be allowed but not yaw (meaning that wood is not rubber and cannot
be distorted in the horizontal plan of the grain).
And to make a long story.....long, I found a software that was able to accept those constraints and the ribs were unbent one by one using extremely
lengthy calculations (in fact it uses finite
elements simulations). I had to dig into some long forgotten theories, The annoying side effect is that this proved some professors that I used to
hate...right, I ended up needing it one day.
The resulting shapes were kind of surprise. I was expecting a more regular shape.
To test the result, I printed the flat ribs in 1/1 scale and tested them without the mold, only by using an adhesive tape while matching the external
shapes, and they naturally bent in place and shape (OK. it is easy with paper).
The funny thing is that now, the carton ribs will guide the correction of the mold ! In this project everything seems to be inverted.
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Jameel
Oud Junkie
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Cool stuff! That's a brave soul who attempts to build that in wood. I start sweating just thinking about it. But I'm loving it nonetheless.
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jdowning
Oud Junkie
Posts: 3485
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Location: Ontario, Canada
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Nice work ALAMI!
The rib profiles will greatly assist in the construction of the bowl but each rib, of course, also has a finite thickness so that the angle of the
joint surfaces will be constantly changing along the length of each mating rib. This will be a challenge for the luthier but I wonder if this might be
fairly easily resolved by first getting the mating rib surfaces to be a reasonably close fit (using the rib templates) and then by running a short,
thin file (or sanding strip) between the ribs - to remove any remaining discrepancies - a perfect fit might be achieved? It might also help to have
ebony, inter rib, purfling to visually disguise any slight joint inaccuracies?
I know what you mean about some engineering mathematics learned (or not) at University actually having a practical application in the real world!!
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msimon
Oud Maniac
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Location: Los Angeles
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I love the idea, ALAMI! I cannot wait to see how it comes along!
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Peyman
Oud Junkie
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Nice work again. Hope this one comes around.
Maybe I mentioned this before but one could also carve the bowl out of wood!
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Oud Freak
Oud Junkie
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Quote: Originally posted by ALAMI  | This project was on hold for a while due to some technical bottlenecks coupled with a lack of free time.
In this project everything seems to be inverted.
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Hi ALAMI, hope all's well. So what about this project? Is it going to be realised?
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ALAMI
Oud Junkie
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OF, Yes, it is started,
I've been working closely with Fadi Matta those last 3 weeks, he is fixing the mold and doing his tests, Fadi is a great luthier and his workshop,as
you know, is just 15 minutes away from Beirut so we were able to meet frequently and discuss and fix things, he helped me a lot by explaining the
mechanics of wood and what can and can't be done.
Peyman, I talked to Fadi about carving and he was very reluctant to the idea, he believes that a carved bowl of this size would be very difficult and
that the wood near the right-arm-side of the bowl would be very weak due to grain orientation.
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Peyman
Oud Junkie
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I see what you mean. I am sure the end result will be really neat. From posts here, Fadi Matta seems like a great luthier to tackle this project.
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Oud Freak
Oud Junkie
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Registered: 11-23-2007
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| Quote: Originally posted by ALAMI | OF, Yes, it is started,
I've been working closely with Fadi Matta those last 3 weeks, he is fixing the mold and doing his tests, Fadi is a great luthier and his workshop,as
you know, is just 15 minutes away from Beirut so we were able to meet frequently and discuss and fix things, he helped me a lot by explaining the
mechanics of wood and what can and can't be done.
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Ah very good! Am glad that Fadi will do it , your project is in the safest and most artistic hands
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