The quietest instrument in the room, drawn full size.
Tortuga Early Instruments is a working library for the people who still build harpsichords — a plain-language history of the craft, a directory of today's makers and suppliers, a maker held up to the light each quarter, and honest bench notes from one small shop.
Five rooms in one small shop.
A history worth reading
Six centuries, from a 1397 note about a "clavicembalum" to the makers at their benches today — told plainly, with the good stories kept and the tall tales flagged.
Makers & resources
A checked directory of living builders, kit and plans houses, jack and wire suppliers, societies, and the museum collections where the originals live.
The quarterly spotlight
One maker from history and one working today, looked at closely — because a craft is learned from particular people, not from an average.
The workshop
Bench notes from a Flemish single after the 1640 Ruckers at Yale, and a bentside spinet from a Hubbard kit — what went right, what didn't.
Tools & methods
Hand planes and a CNC router on the same bench, and the rule that decides which touches the instrument — plus a CNC lathe now coming online.
The Harpsichord Project
Ernest Miller's remarkable eBook is why this shop's Ruckers ever got built. It has a standing feature below.
Ernest Miller's The Harpsichord Project
If you have ever wanted to build a harpsichord and didn't know where to begin, begin here. The Harpsichord Project is Ernest Miller's 1,122-page illustrated guide to building a single-manual Flemish harpsichord after the 1640 Andreas Ruckers — the same instrument this shop reproduced — written specifically for the first-time builder.
It is not a coffee-table book. It is a construction manual with 1,167 photographs and drawings, embedded video for the things words can't carry, sound files of the finished instrument, CAD files for full-size blueprints, and a full chapter on making wooden jacks. Miller and his wife Sandra build two or three instruments a year from a two-person shop in Chocowinity, North Carolina; he answers builders' emails personally.
The download is $90, and the free demo hands you the first six chapters — the entire keyboard — unabridged, so you can build the hardest sub-assembly before spending a dollar. It is, plainly, the most complete harpsichord-building book in print.
Visit The Harpsichord Project →
Get the free six-chapter demo →
Tardus et Stabilis
Slow and steady — the shop, and the craftWhy "Tortuga"
Because the work moves at a turtle's pace, and that turns out to be the right speed. A harpsichord is hundreds of hours of small, exact decisions, and there is no way to hurry the parts that matter. The motto — Tardus et Stabilis, slow and steady — is a description, not an aspiration.
The pages here are written for anyone curious about how these instruments are made and who is still making them: players wondering what they're hearing, woodworkers thinking about a first build, and makers looking for a supplier or a drawing. Everything outbound is checked. Where a good story rests on thin evidence, it's flagged rather than repeated as fact. Corrections are always welcome.