I designed and made two original style of qin.
The Half Hundun and the Big Handscroll, both embryos were made at a Beijing Qin masters atelier, his name is TIAN Shuang Kun 田双昆 , one of the four student of Guan PingHu. I designed the qins using foam core, a scale 1:10 (if I remember correctly)The model was about 10inches long.
The lacquer + deerhorn powder coating was put on under the instruction of ZHENG MingZhong, the palace museum specialist.
While I was visiting him at his home, I saw he had lots of rescued qins on the wall. And I liked one of them very much, which was unpolished, the lacquer was in rough cheese clot state (but black color). The sound was really gd, makes no difference polished or not, he said.
So I asked if he could teach me how to make a qin, he said yes. So I designed 5 models, out of the 5, we picked out two. (Since you have to wait around for each coating to dry, making one or two needs the same block of time; so i decided to make two qins)
He gave some comments to which one is better sounding, there was one more round belly version I thought it would sound really good - acoustically speaking it would ressemble african tree drums - but in miniature - i thought. He said, it would take too much material, would be expensive, cost twice as much, so better use the more standard bodies. The wood is from 100 year old "shan" wood.
So I picked out my two favorite models and had them made to full size and put on the lacquer myself, but it took 2 years before I finish because I didnt have time to polish etc. Finally its finished. Am so happy. It remains to be one of my happiest "oeuvre" in the ensemble of Digital Guqin + Qin culture research. I adapted my tuning pegs from some very sturdy plexiglass tubes. Even though I have purchased two full sets of wood and tassels. I decided I like them transparent with tiny handmade short silky tassels and not the big candle like typical long strands.
Half Hundun Qin back
Half Hundun Qin pegs - adapted from plexi glass tubes with hand made tassels
Getting ready
Nice day today王悠荻 May09 National Guqin Compeititon first prize : video here : GuangLingShan
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