[Melodica-Me]

Thanks Shannon, the mandrel was .125 thick steel rod, the pin hole was .046875 and the wire I used was .010 stainless steel spring wire with mirror finish. no issues with consistency because I used the lathe and the winding was equally spaced and the jig kept the tension even. Working with arcylic is easy, you just need to keep the protectant cover on until the very end to avoid any scratches, also prep is very important when glueing. I did not use drill bits, I used end mills which worked great for boring holes and a carbide cove router bit for grooves. All major cutting on acrylic was done by laser. This is where design and accuracy in math is very important. If you miscalculate you can wind up with keys and pins that don’t align and possible binding can happen. Wood is much more forgiving. I was afraid I was going to ruin some of the keys during the build so I had extras made and never used them so I have spare parts. A good buffing wheel with the right polishing compound to clean up after cuts is also really important. The biggest challenge during the build is tapping deep holes with small taps in aluminum. I had to remake one of the end caps that I broke a tap while cutting some threads. I gave up trying to pull out the broken tap and just made another one. As for which Diamanté I like better, I have to say #002 is my favorite simply because I made a lot of improvements over #001 I know I will be playing it more. As mentioned on a previous post I have one (1) more Diamanté build and that will be the last one built in that style but, it will be different than the first two. No need to ask what those differences will be as the apple has not fallen from the tree and hit my head yet lol, but it will be different.
Melodica-Me