she may be "finished", but she sure ain't finished!

There's trial by fire, and then there's trial by water...

Not part of the original plan, but she got left out in the rain!  This was just after a second and hopefully comprehensive polyu coat on the soundboard, wrestplank, and case sides, and the first coat on the inside of the soundbox and the top edges and inner faces of the case lumber.  It was cloudy and misty but not raining, I got called off to an important event on short notice, no time to move the instrument back under a roof, and a couple hours later, the "mist" had turned into regular Northwest rain.  Yikes.

Seems like no immediate harm was done; the fresh finish seemed to readily repel the water (perhaps even more vehemently, since it was outgassing all those solvents), and two days later, there is no visible sign of the ordeal.  But it's certainly a good test, a harsher test than I ever planned to subject the thing to.  We shall see if enough water managed to sneak past the finish barriers (coverage is definitely not 100%, there are regions which have been kept bare wood for later gluing steps), to cause any problems later; this could include obvious things like warping and cracking, or more insidious things like mold stains or rot forming underneath the finish in future years...

Anyway, at this point, I don't know of anything special to do about it other than just let it dry for a good long time, and not very fast.  I had been planning to keep it in a semi-indoors location, a garage, for the (solvent) drying process, but turns out there is a convenient place to park it outdoors, next to the garage, under an awning; I think this location may be better, for the same reason I originally worried that it might be worse: higher humidity.  Now that the instrument has probably attained the highest internal humidity since its wood parts were green, and the highest it'll ever see again (I hope!), I want to *very gradually* lower it down, to the "Pacific Northwest indoor winter" level, which is still reasonably high.  I have some reason to hope that there will not be dramatic damage from this water incident, at least, thanks to my ill-advised experiment with the "wet-pack" on the spineside 2x4, back when I was building the frame.  That extended water exposure to a small region surely wicked more water into the unfinished lumber than this relatively brief shower could have, through the small areas without finish.  Didn't kill it, so I guess maybe it made it stronger?  Well, one can hope.  I now definitely don't plan to put any string tension on this instrument, until after the New Year at minimum.

That was the "exciting" part.  The rest has been more routine, so far:

I trussed up the instrument for travel, putting padding on the convex corners, and duck-taping the lid piece to the top to keep the soundboard protected inside.

Fits quite readily into a late-model Toyota Rav4 (electric version: note the 50 Amp charging cable plugged into the left side; full charge in 20 min), with room for about 1.5 passengers and a driver (and a dog!).

This is the first time I've tried to move the instrument around very much, since it has gained quite a lot of weight with the case sides and wrestplank being attached.  It's still a breeze to handle for two people, and by grabbing it in the right places to balance comfortably, I am able to readily carry it around all by myself.  It's a long, awkward shape to navigate through doors and in spaces with low ceilings, but it's really delightfully light in weight.  Even if it only sounded slightly worse than a piano, rather than way way better, it'd still be worth building, just for the portability.  To move much of a piano with that same Rav4, I think you'd need the hitch, and a trailer.

Here you can see the soundboard, back side already finished before coming here; it's leaning on the lid piece, which has been painted flat black on the top side, and flat white on the bottom side, where the art will go.

I did some masking with duck tape and chicken feed bags, then painted the bottom panel flat black.  Then took the masking off, and sprayed the whole bottom and the sides with polyu (coat #1).

The next day I positioned it rightside-up, and sprayed the soundbox and upper surfaces (coat #1), and the soundboard and sides (coat #2).  That was the Day of the Rain...

Now, I'll just let it sit for a while where it is, under a roof protected from rain, but at outdoor humidity level.

Next up, a little Holiday Travel, and then I'll be back to finally glue the soundboard into place.  Lots of little brass-plated nails.  And steel nails, for the hitch-pins (glad I tested and found out in advance that the brass nails won't cut it for the hitch-pins).  And I'll drill out the wrestplank holes to final diameter (glad I hadn't already done this before the Rain Thing).  And then, time to string it up -- and see if it breaks!  And then, well, I'll pretty much be done with construction on the pieces that I now have.  It'll be time to start acquiring the wood and other materials, with which to build the keyboard, action, and the stand.  And a few more pieces needed for the lid.  I have a plan for a nice way to do the latch.  Not that I ever finalize a design before beginning construction, but I'll certainly have some time during this upcoming travel, to intensively go over the design of these elements.  I find I can compensate in part for my lack of either experience or common sense, by delaying implementation of designs for as long as possible, even when it seems that the design is done and what am I waiting for; this seems to give my brain time to bubble things up from the subconscious, things that bother me but I don't know why, better ways to do things, etc..  Haven't yet found a way to market this technique to Corporate America, but I think they could really benefit...

As we were moving the instrument, a curious passerby asked what it was, and then when will it be finished.  I guesstimated another six months.  So there you go, I'm on record with a projected completion date; let's make it, specifically, the upcoming Summer Solstice.  Seems like longer than it should take -- unless I consider the past history of all my other projects.