Stringholders and coverplates

I thought to myself; it's only the nut left and we'll be rocking. But oh no, I forgot about the string holders. The coverplates that are available for me have the holes directly through the material and I don't fancy that since the strings break quite easily. 

Some might say that there are other, better, coverplates around, and even a bloke in England that spins his own cones. Well that bugger took 500 quid off my hands and promised to deliver six sets. That was three years ago.

So I make string holders and put them on coverplates I get from honest, upstanding merchants. The first pic shows the rebate I make with a tiny shoulder plane. 

Then I work on the profile with other tiny planes, here you can see a Lie Nielsen no.1 and a miniature block plane. 

I cut the profiled piece in two and shape the ends with a single cut file. 

The string holders are held in place by screws. The ones I thought would fit were long, so I put them through some scrap and sawed them off. 

Here you can see one of them from the underside of the coverplate. Before I screwed them down I also drilled holes for the strings. I want them close to the metal so the break angle is good over the saddle. 

For locating the holes I've made a see through template. There are no margins here and this is the only way I've come up with. (If the soundwell was totally exactly centered in the body I imagine this could be done with the actual coverplate, but hey - it's an Argapa. More mojo than precision.)

And this is a preview of the finished articles. Now I may think to myself; it's only the nut left and we'll be rocking. But oh no, there are a few more steps. Shaping the saddle, fastening the biscuit to the cone, making the ****** **** and putting it ** *** **** so the **** **** ****** and ******. 

The last step is the entire secret to why my resonators sound so bloody fantastic. Dead easy it is too.