Jameel's Mizrite
Folks,
I finished working four of Jameel's new rishi material today and I'm pretty happy. I like the result better than anything I've tried ( and I think
I've tried everything but tie-wraps) except cow horn which I usually use but is slightly nauseating to work on and breaks at inconvenient times.
I made 3 oud picks ( which of risha/rishi is singular/plural?). The stock material is too stiff for me but the stuff scapes down pretty easy and I
got one that was too soft and one that was just right after my experimentation. The finished result was very much like horn but without the stink
(when scaping it) and the new material seems indestructible. I also made some buzuq picks that are stiffer like the one I got from Dr. Racy at the
retreat last summer. The standard saz picks I find are just too soft for buzuq. You can get three saz/buzuq picks from one piece of Mizrite.
Techinque, if you're interested...
I have some tendonitis in my hands and holding the material with one hand while holding the blade and scraping with the other is quite stressfull on
the hands.
I used the following approach. First, take a new utility knife blade and burnish a scraping edge on it (if you don't know how to roll an edge over on
a blade, search out a wordworking page somewhere and they will show you. I take the Mizrite and, using a C clamp, clamp it on to a reasonably flat
piece of 3/4 inch pine (or plywood would do) about 4 inches by 12 inches. Take the utility blade and grab it with some thin jaw vise grips and start
scraping. This give better leverage than holding by hand, but if you have young strong hands go for it Periodically rotate the rishi and clamp the
other end so both ends get scraped. I found that a thickness around .030 inch in the center and .025 inch at the ends was about right for me but if
you don't have a micrometer, you can feel the stiffness of the rishi periodically to see if it's OK or not. You can also make one end stiffer than
the other for some variety.
The pick sanding boards that Jameel has are, I'm sure, just fine for rounding of the ends after you have cut the approximate shape with some scissors.
You can also go into your friendly local nail salon and pick these up as I did.
When you are all done with the rough profiling and rounding, go over all the edges with some 400 grit sandpaper to remove all the fuzzy edges and
you'll have a rishi that seems like it will last forever (until you lose it which for me is about two weeks - what do people that find the lost rishi
do with them anyway?) If the above was interesting but in comprehensible I can post pictures...
regards,
Harry
http://www.assabetstrings.com
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