Lonnie Ezell

Had a blast floating and camping with friends this weekend, though the temps did a touch on the sweltering side. And the kids managed to miss the girls and the beads. On Sunday, though, I did get a chance to get some more work into the bodhran. I’ve now got the frame ready for a final sanding and staining. Getting close!

End Caps

Since I’m not a master woodworker (you’ve figured that out by now, right?) the ends on the veneers didn’t quite match up perfectly.

No problem! I’ve got this one figured out.

I ended up staining the leftover veneer with some Ebony wood stain that I had from the Cajon project. The idea is to create a simple end-cap that has decorative uses as well as cleans up the binding.

It worked out well, with the only tricky part being getting a tight fit. The secret there was simply to use scissors on the stained veneer strip to take away tiny slivers of wood where it wasn’t fitting. And to keep at it until it magically decided it was the right size.

The end caps are for both the inside and outside of the frame. I made them directly across from each other so it gives the impression that a single piece of solid wood was inserted through it all.

The Inner Ring

The inner ring serves a dual purpose.

The primary purpose I used it for was to provide enough room for my fingers to actually twist the tuning lugs with scraping a hole through the frame. I have this feeling that neither my fingers nor the drum would enjoy that.

The second reason (and this round’s bonus item!) is that it provides a bit more stability to a frame that started off a little wishy-washy. Though, even without the inner ring installed, it was already feeling much more stable.

As you can tell, I opted to stain it Ebony, also. No reason other than a bit of contrast. OK. So, maybe I just happened to steal the look from one of my favorite bodhrans, but we don’t need to spread that nasty rumor, now do we?

Final Shaping

 Once the inner ring was glued in and dry, it was time for the final bit of fun before calling it ready to color.

The top outside edge of the frame (that’s the part where the dead goat will lie against) needs to rounded/angled to create a good edge for the skin to lie against. And sharp edges are not allowed at this part. Otherwise, all of the work I do to prepare and mount a skin would be for nothing as the edge would act as a butter knife, slowly sawing through the skin.

I also repeated this to the bottom inside edge for a couple of reasons.

First, it’s supposed to help the acoustics a bit, but I’m kinda iffy on that. I suppose that it might allow a small area for the sound waves to escape a bit earlier than they might otherwise, but I’m not convinced that would make all that much difference.

The second reason is that whole butter-knife aspect. Except this time it would be sawing against my arm. And that’s definitely something that I don’t want going on. I mean, this is supposed to be a fun thing to play, right?

I made sure to round the exterior edges for a more polished look everywhere and thought I was done, Until I realized there were a few gaps in the wood where small pieces of the plywood had chipped out. Time to break out the wood filler! Good thing it was on the edges, since these will be either hidden under the goat skin, or colored black along the bottom side of the drum.

Once that dries, I’ll give it one last final sanding with some really fine sand-paper and break out the stain.

Good times!