When in the title above I employ the term easy, I am referring to the materials used, the modicum of skill required, and the simplicity of concept. With regard to the time which must be spent to their completion, an antonym of easy might be more appropriate. If you have at least modest financial means, you may wish to purchase something similar to these from Pilgrim's Projects (tell them Fyoder sent you and get 5% off!). At time of writing, they will sell you a dozen for about 24 American dollars. For so modest a price, you would be well advised to purchase two dozen. But if, sadly, you have wantonly blown your budget on other shite, as is the case with your humble author, you may produce these quite easily if you do not begrudge the time.
Behold our simple materials.
A wooden broom handle could be made to serve, but that seemed somewhat less substantial than what I envisioned. I found this over-sized dowel type thing at an establishment known as Home Depot. I also have 24 quarter inch bolts with wing nuts, and some felt with sticky backing.
I made marks every 3/4" along the length of the large dowel.
Then I clamped it into my yellow plastic miracle jig.
Saw
Here I completed the task of converting the dowel into disks. I have kept them in pairs out of a misplaced aesthetic concern, pointless since I am not going to finish these things nicely, nor inset the bolt head, nor employ any other means whereby their appearance might be enhanced. But it was little enough trouble.
If it is your intention to emulate this exercise, allow me to offer some invaluable advice to save you grief. Be certain to complete one or two or three prototypes before moving on to any mass production. I did and discovered that a one inch disk thickness was a little too thick, especially with the additional thickness provided by the felt. These bolts are not fully threaded, either, so I made a second prototype and tested it on a violin to be sure the 3/4 inch thick disk would work. It would be a pity to do all that sawing only to discover a flaw in the design which rendered all the disks useless.
I drilled these in pairs so that the holes would line up nicely, using three drill bits, starting small and moving towards 1/4 inch.
Here are the paired disks holed.
You will have noticed that I have drilled slightly offset from centre. By so doing I seek to maximize the clamp area. A downside to this is that these clamps need to be oriented, whereas a perfectly symetrical clamp is always correctly oriented when you go to put it on the violin. Should you wish to emulate my off centre approach, allow me to advise you not to drill too far from centre, lest the wall be too thin and prone to breakage. Again, discovery through prototyping cannot be too highly recommended.
The next step is to trace around the disk onto the back of the stickable felt.
One could do entire disks and it might be faster, though it would necessitate adding a 'puncture the felt over the hole' stage. The disk featured in the picture is part of my 2nd prototype. Later I disposed of the felt pen in favour of an awl. It marked the peel-off paper on the back of the felt quite visibly, without marking the wooden disk.
Once traced, then cut. Peel the backing paper and stick the shaped felt to the disk.
Here are the parts of a spool clamp prior to assembly.
Here is the completed lot.
And finally, here they are securing the top to a violin body.
