Portfolios
Miscellany
Daniel Joseph Betsill, luthier
Artist's Profile, UGA Website 2008
Monday, February 1, 2010
About 15 years ago I made a mailbox with elaborate turned finials for my grandmother. It had a good long life before someone ran into it this past Christmas. See my furniture page for details of the replacement. Also in this picture is a spalted magnolia bowl recently completed
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Thursday, January 7, 2010
Here's a sexy shot of the latest tenor cittern.
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Saturday, December 19, 2009
It plays! The Estey Organ is fully functional. See dedicated page for project details.
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Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Work resumes on the Symphony. No, not that kind of symphony. See also "Organistrum"
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Wednesday, November 25, 2009
It's Eric the Half-a-Bridge!
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Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The tenor has its fingerboard nearly complete. The scrolls are dry fitted with doublestick tape. Peg blanks wait in the near distance. A piece of veneer taped in place protects the rosette.
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Thursday, November 5, 2009
At long last the stand for the Stockhausen slit drums is made. The complete project details are here .
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Sunday, October 4, 2009
Visit the new Pipemaking page for today's distraction from lutherie.
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Monday, September 14, 2009
The latest DaSalo has top attached and pegs turned and is awaiting fretting. The tenor is in progress of fretting (the fingerboards are unattached)
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Saturday, July 25, 2009
I have decided on a tulip shaped peg in ebony for the constructed cittern with the 'fox head' shield.
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Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Carving the tenor cittern pexbox. See dedicated page for more images of this instrument.
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Thursday, June 4, 2009
Progress on the latest tenor cittern. See dedicated page for more images of this instrument.
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Wednesday, May 20, 2009
I'm working on another tenor cittern, this one with cherry back stripe and fingerboard See dedicated page for more on my citterns
And I scored some major hard maple for the neck/pegbox. This is a cutoff of a post from an old building. They don't make 'em out of wood like they used to.
Look at that grain,
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Saturday, May 2, 2009
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The DeGive Dulcimer is complete. See dedicated page for project log.
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Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Another Olmstead Park storm victim. I don't think this poplar is big enough to have been planted 100 years ago like the oak I scavenged previously, but it was a significant tree and it will be missed. Until I turn it into bowls. The light post and redbud it took out will also be missed.
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Sunday, April 12, 2009
This is my favorite part of making a banjo: shaping the top of the neck. It needs to be shaped just so, because this is where you hand spends the most time on a necked instrument: the first position. Click here to go to my banjo page.
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Tuesday, February 18, 2009
A new tenor cittern is complete. See dedicated page for more images and a sound clip
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Sunday, November 30, 2008
My wife and I are restoring her aunt's 1902 Estes Organ. See dedicated page for project details.
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Sunday, November 2, 2008
Ba-roque'n'roll! I bought this steel strung made- in-China kiddie guitar for $30. It actually sounds pretty good and is relatively well intonated. Watch it be transformed into an early guitar. I haven't decided yet whether it's going to be a 4-course renaissance instrument or a 5-course baroque. I know, the body shape is all wrong, and what about those flames. But with a peghead extension, a little bridge reshaping and a respray job, I think we've got a good ren-fest instrument here.
First step, pull off hardware (it's already 1/2 as light) and scrape down the peghead for the new extension and facing. Looks like the thing is made out of luan. See dedicated page for project details.
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Friday, September 5, 2008
The bottom of the symphony will be made up out of staves to satisfy the arched profile of the bottom
The string holder for the symphony, viewing from the bottom of the instrument.
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Tuesday, June 10, 2008
An historic event: the 80 year old white oak at the entrance to Emory University is cut down to make way for the re-directed road which will once again pass through the pillars.
So into my trunk it goes (well, part of it) and. . .
. . .back to the workshop where it will be turned into bowls as a donation to The Alliance to Improve Emory Village and to Glen Memorial Methodist Church for fundraising efforts. (The big hunk of magnolia has new friends to keep it company for a time)
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Tuesday, June 3, 2008
I'm making a symphony for my friend Kevin in exchange for his excellent baglama saz. Top is my drawing, a modification of an existing design, showing the half-circle peghead I've created to avoid tapping the pegs directly into the body. I am also contriving the have the keys occupy round holes in the bottom and, instead of penetrating the top (top as relative to the player position) as is common, I am creating channels inside the box for the opposite end of the keys to rest. These improvements both attenuate potential cracking of the case and, consequentially, is easier to build because I'm not tapping two sets of rectangular holes. The bottom picture is the figured sapele I'm using for the case
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Workshop in a closet.
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Online Chap Book:
And
did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?
-William Blake
Let Athene dwell in the cities she's founded. For me, the woodlands.
-Virgil
He slept thus until late morning, while the pillows arranged themselves into a large flat plain on which his now quieter sleep would wander. On these white roads, he slowly returned to his senses, to daylight, to reality - and at last he opened his eyes as does a sleeping passenger when the train stops at a station.
-Bruno Schultz, from The Cinnamon Shops
Deus Mysterium tremendum et fascinans.
-Rudolph Otto
Are you angry with him whose armpits stink? Are you angry with him whose mouth smells foul? What good does this anger do you? He has such a mouth, he has such armpits: it is necessary that such an emination must come from such things. But the man has reason, it will be said, and he is able, if he takes pains, to discover wherein he offends. . .there is no need of anger, the stuff of tragic actors and whores.
-Marcus Aurelius
Green aisles of Pullman cars/ Soothe me like trees/ Woven in old tapestries/ I love to watch the stars/ Remote above the earth/ In watery light,/ while in the lower berth./ I whirl through the night.
-William Rose Benet
With faith, discipline and selfless devotion to duty, there is nothing worthwhile that you cannot achieve.
-Jinnah
The
full streams feed on flower of rushes, /Ripe grasses trammel a traveling
foot, /The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes/
From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;/And fruit and leaf are as gold
and fire,/And the oat is heard above the lyre, /And the hoofèd
heel of a satyr crushes /The chestnut husk at the chestnut root.
-Swinburne
Both music and dance are voices of the way.
-Zenji Hakuin
For the dulcimer rhimes are grace place and the like.
-Christopher Smart