Building my first oud...

I decided to go ahead and start my own thread now for my oud project; I posted this picture last night in Jameel's oud-making thread that shows my starting materials:



I hope you guys will continue to look here to see my progress!

Thanks Dr. Oud. I do have a small sample piece of walnut somewhere that I think will work as a bridge blank.. Is the bridge weight an issue with the tone or the structure?

You guessed right about all the scraps laying around; I know my wife would love it if I threw them out and made my workspace neater (she's kind enough to endure me setting up shop right the middle of our house until I find a better space; the room my bench is in is right next to our bedroom!), but I keep thinking I might need those pieces later for making jigs and clamping cauls and stuff .

More to come...

Jay

Quote:

Originally posted by Jay... I do have a small sample piece of walnut somewhere that I think will work as a bridge blank.. Is the bridge weight an issue with the tone or the structure? You guessed right about all the scraps laying around; I know my wife would love it if I threw them out and made my workspace neater (she's kind enough to endure me setting up shop right the middle of our house until I find a better space; the room my bench is in is right next to our bedroom!), but I keep thinking I might need those pieces later for making jigs and clamping cauls and stuff . More to come... Jay

Thanks for your support, Amos... we'll see if I have the skills to complete this .. I'd love to talk with Mr. Kyvelos and his apprentice after I get going on the project.

Jay

Tonight my brother-in-law came to visit and brought several gifts from my mother-in-law in Turkey. She sent a set of pegs, some mizrabs, and strings:



Çok tesekkürler, Annecim!

Getting Started...

Hi all,

When I started this thread I planned on beginning construction after a few weeks, but it looks like two whole months have passed now! I guess I'm slow at getting things started

I've made the profile pattern based on Dr. Oud's drawings:




And began shaping the neck and tail blocks:







I made a mistake on the neck block at first- I ended up rounding the edges over too much with the block plane. Also, maybe I was too eager and didn't pay close enough attention to the drawings; the axis around which the profile pattern is rotated leaves the neck block about 5 mm from the edge that mates with the oud face. This allows for the addition of extra material on the side ribs.

I had enough scrap from the block I cut the original peice out of (that's it underneath the neck block in the first picture above) to start fresh, and below is the result of the second attempt:




The tail block:



And here's the whole assembly fixture, waiting for the glue to dry between the spacer blocks and the spreader bar. I'm doing this "Dr. Oud style" without a mold; the ribs will held between the neck and tail blocks by fitting each one to the previous one.

Thanks guys for your encouragement!

Orahim1, I'm just a beginner at woodworking- so I too wish I was good at it . I haven't taken any classes yet, but I like to read alot about woodworking and I'm learning alot that way. I'm lucky that there are people out there like Jameel, Dr. Oud, and others who are willing to share their work and knowledge...

And here's a shoutout to Mike for giving us the opportunity to share our common interests in a positive way...

J

Getting it together...

OK!

I resawed the African mahogany for the ribs this week. After looking at the grain I ended up slicing the boards up with a tablesaw so that the grain is oriented as flat as possible. It was my first time using a tablesaw, so it took more than a few cuts to get the hang of it. The main mistake I made was trying too hard to keep the boards pushed against the fence. The pressure ended up pushing the board into the side of the blade, causing it to rub against and burn the wood. In addition, sometimes I stopped the motion of the board mid-cut which also caused burn marks. But so far it looks like the burn marks come off after a few passes of the plane, and I cut them extra thick so there's plenty of material to remove. Also, I've probably got enough ribs for three ouds here so I can just throw out the really bad ones.





Oh yeah, since I ended up cutting the boards this way the rib blanks aren't as wide as the specs in Dr. Oud's book. I know there was some discussion in Jameel's thread about calculating rib dimensions.. Being kind of a math geek I went over alot of the geometry this week and determined that, with the width of these blanks and the shape of my profile I'll need 17 to 19 ribs as a rough estimate. If I have time I want to write up my calculations and post it here.. One thing I found is that, once you go above 13 ribs or so, estimating the bowl as an arc instead of a circumscribed polygon results in negligible errors. More on this later I hope...


Knowing that I'll need a flat reference surface and a flat sanding block for shaping to dimension, I put together these MDF blocks topped with glass for ultimate flatness:




I wanted to use some heavy-duty float glass for this, but this single-strength window glass was all I could find. But backed with the 3/4" MDF, I think they will hold up just fine. Later I'll add a bracket to attach the two plates at right angles, something like this:




I'll attach sandpaper to the narrow plate and use this mode for sanding the face joint, etc.


The next thing I need is a bending iron. Following Jameel's lead, I wired up this dimmer switch to a high-watt light bulb:




And I'll make a frame to mount it inside this pipe:



The heat from the light buld should be more than enough to heat the pipe so I can use it as a bending iron to shape the ribs.


...and the final picture I have for this post is an addition to my raw materials list. I recieved some horns today which I bought off eBay. I plan to split these, flatten them, sand and polish them, and then use them as material for the rosettes. I still haven't found much information on how to work with horn, so any input from you guys would be much appreciated. Only one is shown in the picture, but I bought ten total so I can experiment. Then I'll take whatever is left and probably sell it again on eBay to get some of my money back





Happy ouding everyone! I hope to post more soon!

Thanks for the advice everyone.. I was out of town last week and I haven't started bending yet, but I'll have to see how it goes with the steel pipe. The soup can is a great idea, Andy (not to mention easy on the wallet ).

Dr. Oud- I'm going to try boiling the horn and clamping it like you said, maybe putting it in the oven for a while if it doesn't flatten with clamping pressure alone. If anyone is interested, I found Marc Carlson's webpage to be helpful:

http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/horn/hornhome.html

Peyman- Welcome to the forums! I also followed them for a long time before deciding to post. Glad to get your input.

For a while I was considering steam bending the ribs... there was a good tip in the last issue of Fine Woodworking where a guy used polyethylene package tubing film to avoid the need for a steambox. I've got access to steam utilities so I thought this would be an easy way to bend the ribs quickly. In the end, aside from the issue of drying the ribs, I figured that I'd end up needing a bending iron anyway since I'll have to tweak the ribs to fit them together on the assembly fixture. So I figured I might as well use the iron for the whole process.

Just curious though, especially with all the real luthiers that frequent this forum, has anyone used steam bending in oud making? I've never seen it done, and I figure there's got to be a good reason.

Next time I'll have some pics to post too!

Jay

Hi Jay,
I hope your oud is going well. Just remember, the first one is a learning experience, the second ond can be perfect
Here is my bending iron, I use a little water (I'm a beginner too, when I bent dry, I snapped ribs, too much water and you spend a long time at the iron)
It heats up quick, but not even, this does not pose much of a problem with the narrow staves of the oud. You need ventalation with gas too. If you go this route, try to fing a 3" diameter pipe with 1/4 walls, or if the pipe is smaller, an oval shape gives more surface area.
Best of Luck
Scott

Bending a rib

Thanks for the advice, Scott. Looking forward to seeing the progress on your wife's lute and also the lavta.

I finally tried out my bending apparatus today. As the doc pointed out, steel doesn't have good heat transfer characteristics; It takes a while to heat up with the bulb, but eventually it does get hot enough to boil off water. You can tell it's sluggish, and when the wood takes away its heat it needs a moment to respond. Tomorrow I think I'll look around the shop at school and see if there's any copper pipe scraps that I might be able to substitute.

I did end up using the water spritzer before bending.. maybe after I get a few ribs bent without cracking them I'll move on to dry bending as you kindly suggested, Dincer Bey.

At any rate, I was able to get the first rib bent pretty well to form, and I used the MDF/glass surface to joint it.



This rib is just for practice, since I cracked some of the grain while bending. After bending, I also realized that my neck and tail blocks could use a little more shaping to match the form, so I'll need to adjust those before proceeding further.

Well that's all I have for today.. Jameel great job updating your site; the restoration looks incredible!

Jay

MR. JAY

I am very impressed by people like you who takes there time to build a OUD , I would follow up all the way till the end .I am ordering DR. OUDs book today just for my general knowledge .I like the Guy he is very helpful and has a lots of knwoledge in many areas. But hey Jay leep it up hope to see a very nice sounding Oud soon. Best Regards , Samir,California)

Hey Samir,

Thanks for your nice comments. I think you'll find that Dr. Oud's book is very interesting, even if you don't plan on building. There's a ton of knowledge in there, including tips on maintaining and caring for your oud too.

I'm glad you all are following my project.. I'll definitely post sound clips as soon as it's done, but at the rate I'm going it may be a while (and oh yeah did I mention that I don't know how to play the oud- I'll need help from you guys when this is done )

cheers,

Jay

I'm sorry not to have explained myself fully. The heat gun is an electrically powered device used generally for things such as paint stripping. If it is positioned in a way that places the nozzle in the copper tube the only hot surface is the tube. it is of course posible to burn oneself if the tube is touched. This heating is managed without any flame which is a far greater risk I believe. I know that many members of the Australian Association of Musical Instrument Makers Association have turned to this style of bender if they can't afford a professional device. Another thing I have found useful for small items such as purfling is a household steam generator of the type sold for cleaning bathrooms etc. this provides heat and moisture in one hit.

It blows hot air but much hotter than a hairdryer. I made the mistake with my first one of completely closing the end of the tube, the air had nowhere to go and came back onto the hater and melted the plastic parts.

Quote:

Originally posted by AusOudlover .... Another thing I have found useful for small items such as purfling is a household steam generator of the type sold for cleaning bathrooms etc. this provides heat and moisture in one hit.

Thanks for all the advice guys... I've been side-tracked for a while but hopefully I'll have some more pics real soon. The "Oud Projects Forum" is really taking off! I'm learning alot from all of your posts. Glad to watch the Doc's restoration here, and Jameel's final product is outstanding!

It turns out my bending iron works just fine with a little practice, so I'm sticking with it for now... maybe I'll soup it up on my next build. I am now able to bend the ribs dry and without cracking them.

After several attempts at glueing up the first ribs I've yet to be successful... I think I twisted the first rib a little on glue-up so it was hard to fit the second without gaps in the joint. So now I'm starting all over with the first rib and we'll see if I can be more careful this time .

Cheers,

Jay

Good Job jay keep going