Look out for hand-forged lamellas!

By Ånon Egeland
Translated by Lucy Moffatt

One fine day in June 2024, a package landed in my mailbox. Strange: I hadn’t ordered anything. It turned out to be a really nice surprise – a gorgeous little Jew’s harp! In typical Telemark style, the bent part of its frame was compressed almost into a T shape. On closer inspection, the harp’s lamella also turned out to have an unusually fine shimmer of colour. Even to an untrained eye like mine, this was a little hint that it hadn’t been made out of any old sawblade. And that turned out to be true.

It had been sent by none other than the Jew’s harp maker Ole Bjørn Skoe, who was keen for some feedback on the timbre and playability of this instrument – one of the first equipped with a lamella that he’d forged himself. Considering the wonders this man can work when he uses regular bandsaw blades for lamellas, it’s no exaggeration to say I was excited about testing out a Jew’s harp where every single component had been hand-forged.

My high expectations were more than satisfied. The 57mm harp was high-pitched – in C. Instruments in this pitch can sometimes lack that soft, sustained tone and can also be hard to play. But Ole Bjørn had avoided that trap: the harp responded smoothly from harmonic no. 4 all the way up to harmonic no. 16, the upper end of the register for traditional Norwegian Jew’s harp tunes. At the time of writing, I’ve been using the instrument for almost a year and my initial impression remains unchallenged.

Part of the reason why Ole Bjørn has started forging his own Jew’s harp lamellas is that the bandsaw blades sold by suppliers like Sandviken no longer have the Jew’s-harp-friendly qualities they used to, whereas tempering the steel yourself gives you full control over the result – assuming that you’re able to master the difficult technique. Although the lamellas you’re tempering are very thin, their thickness may vary enough to make it difficult to achieve a uniform temperature and, by extension, uniform tempering throughout the lamella. Ole Bjørn’s next goal is to work out a ‘recipe’ for forging the optimal Jew’s harp lamella. We’re talking lamellas that are in a totally different league to anything you could hope to make relying on commercial alternatives like bandsaw blades.

The idea of forging his own lamellas came to Ole Bjørn after he met the Italian Jew’s harp maker Luca Boggio at a forging course in Gjøvik. Boggio had learned the art from an old Rom in southern Italy, where Jew’s harp making has always tended to be the preserve of the Roma. And incidentally, Ole Bjørn Skoe isn’t the only person Luca Boggio has inspired to forge his own lamellas. The fine Russian maker Dmitry Babayev also owes a debt of gratitude to the Italian in this regard.

You can find an interview with Luca Boggio here.

Is there a tradition of forging Jew’s harp lamellas here in Norway? Ole Bjørn and I drew a blank when we chatted briefly about that question as I was writing this article. There are many instances of sawblades being used as lamellas – some of them so old that we might suspect that they’re made from handsaw rather than bandsaw blades. Knut Gjermundsson Hovet, the last smith in an unbroken line of Jew’s harp makers in Setesdal, certainly used bandsaw blades. Olav Hauge in Aurdal, Valdres, is said to have used old umbrella spokes. And am I making this up or did I really hear once that springs from old wall clocks also used to be used for Jew’s harp lamellas?

The quality of the lamella’s material is crucial when it comes to good Jew’s harps, so anything related to it is interesting. If any of our readers have come across older Norwegian Jew’s harps whose lamellas they believe may have been hand-forged, we at Munnharpa would love to hear about it. Last but not least, I should point out that Ole Bjørn Skoe has already invested in a tempering furnace, so try and rein in your impatience as you wait for the results!