Hello all,

I am restoring an old Nigout that needed a lot of work. After making a full set of keys I am now at the point of making the tangents, of which I have previously made many (probably on the order of a few hundred). I usually do all the work by hand, sanding, cutting and filing the tangents to my needs. The part that makes this work a labor is not the "flag" part of the tangent, it is the post portion of the tangent that is so hard on my hands and fingers.
 I am a traditionalist so I make full wood tangents (no screws) and I tend to like to restore the instrument rather than update it, so no metal tangents either. I currently use a metal plate with a set of holes drilled large to small to size down the posts but I find this hard on my hands and very time consuming. It works great and I usually weed out the bad tangents pretty quickly but I also find that many of the sizing steps are unnecessary. I have heard of luthiers using lathes, bone sizers, metal sizers and pencil sharpener types of devices to make the posts.

I am interested in what you use to make the posts and what you have tried. If you have something that you prefer can you please help me along by posting a picture or emailing me directly?

Thank you,

Scott Gayman  
.

When I made my own hurdy-gurdy, I made the tangents in two parts:

First, I made a strip of wood with an appropriate (I hope) wedge
cross-section.  I scraped a channel in the wide edge.  I cut this into my
individual flags.  Next I glued the flags onto pieces of thin dowel.  That¹s
it.  I don¹t know if it would hold up to vigorous playing, but most of the
stress presses the flag against the shaft.  I guess a flat spot could be
carved onto the shaft to receive the flag (without the channel).

This is my amateur solution.

Regards,
Leonard Williams

On 6/26/11 11:28 PM, "vonho...@aol.com" <vonho...@aol.com> wrote:

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb5/dtsmithnet/Maker%20Faire%20Det...

David Smith
Michigan,  USA

That's wicked ingenious!