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I made a thing
A few years ago at the Berkeley Early Music Festival, we bought a used crwth, a traditional Welsh folk instrument since the Middle Ages. If you know anybody whose last name is Crowther or Crowder, that person probably had an ancestor who played it professionally.
Getting the crwth properly strung and learning to play it has been a low priority, and it's been leaning against the side of our "entertainment center", a repurposed armoire we picked up twenty years ago. But we wanted at least to get the crwth off the floor, e.g. hanging it up on the side of the armoire. I tried putting some picture hooks over the top edge of the armoire, and they kept falling off: the top edge is about 1/2" wide, then slopes down at a 45° angle. The outside edge also slopes inward, somewhat more vertically, but anything I hang on the hooks tends to have its weight in-board from them, which rotates the hooks outward and off the 45° inside slope.
So in the course of a visit to Home Depot yesterday, we picked up a strip of 1/8" aluminum, and a strip of 1/8" steel (not sure which would work better for the purpose), and I started trying to make custom picture hooks. I started with the aluminum, which I was able to clamp in a vise and bend by hand (with a few hammer blows to get tighter curves).
After half an hour or so, I had two things that looked like eighth-notes.
So I tried them on the armoire, and they stayed in place nicely. I tried hanging the crwth on them, and it really didn't fit: the hooks ran into the tuning pegs.
So I did some more clamping, bending, hammering, sawing, and filing, and came up with version 2.
There's still a bit of interference between the hooks and the tuning pegs, but this will do for now -- at least until we string the thing and actually need to use the tuning pegs. We may also want to stick some moleskin or felt to the insides of the hooks, so the metal doesn't scratch up the wood.
Getting the crwth properly strung and learning to play it has been a low priority, and it's been leaning against the side of our "entertainment center", a repurposed armoire we picked up twenty years ago. But we wanted at least to get the crwth off the floor, e.g. hanging it up on the side of the armoire. I tried putting some picture hooks over the top edge of the armoire, and they kept falling off: the top edge is about 1/2" wide, then slopes down at a 45° angle. The outside edge also slopes inward, somewhat more vertically, but anything I hang on the hooks tends to have its weight in-board from them, which rotates the hooks outward and off the 45° inside slope.
So in the course of a visit to Home Depot yesterday, we picked up a strip of 1/8" aluminum, and a strip of 1/8" steel (not sure which would work better for the purpose), and I started trying to make custom picture hooks. I started with the aluminum, which I was able to clamp in a vise and bend by hand (with a few hammer blows to get tighter curves).
After half an hour or so, I had two things that looked like eighth-notes.So I tried them on the armoire, and they stayed in place nicely. I tried hanging the crwth on them, and it really didn't fit: the hooks ran into the tuning pegs.
So I did some more clamping, bending, hammering, sawing, and filing, and came up with version 2.
There's still a bit of interference between the hooks and the tuning pegs, but this will do for now -- at least until we string the thing and actually need to use the tuning pegs. We may also want to stick some moleskin or felt to the insides of the hooks, so the metal doesn't scratch up the wood.