As I suspected, I purchased bamboo that was too thick so the bamboo could not bend. This is a problem, as an ancient barbitos has arms that bend inwards. This is because in early archaic Greece, the arms were made of horns, and thus had a lot of curvature.1 Otto Gombosi, “New Light on Ancient Greek Music,” Papers Read by Members of the American Musicologist Society at the Annual Meeting, 1939, (1939): 169 Later designs used wood that curved inwards, if only to represent horns for aesthetic reasons.
I now have to try and make the bamboo somewhat bendable, so I came up with a strategy. I first cut the 1.1 inch diameter bamboo rod into three pieces, each two feet in length. The first two pieces I tried to bend using a heat gun.
The bamboo was just too thick, and this did not work. Cassidy from the wood shop then helped me by cutting bamboo off each of the 2ft pieces with a band saw, in the hopes that a thinner piece would bend better. This did not work either, so I moved on to my plan of halving the third piece. Cassidy again used the band saw to cut it into halves for me; and it was this piece that was bendable enough to use.
I am going to make my second prototype lyre out of the wooden bowl donated by Walter, and the halved bamboo pieces. My process to attach the arms to the bowl was similar to the one I used with my first prototype : I used a dremel to cut out sections of the bowl and then placed the arms in these divots (check out the video to see how I did it!). I then used hot glue to attach them to the bowl.
I then attached the crossbar to the arms by using an air compression drill to make a divot in the arms for the crossbar to rest in.
Diagram of new crossbar design with twine 
Sideview of new crossbar design 
Old crossbar design which uses wooden pins to secure the crossbar 
Sideview of old crossbar deisgn, here the wooden pin secures the crossbar to the lyre arm
After that, I placed a drop of hot glue to hold the crossbar to the arms, and then I tied it on with twine. I decided to change my crossbar design because I wanted to experiment with more crossbar designs.
And, viola! My Frame is complete!
Now that my frame is assembled my next step will be to attach the crossbar and then the goat skin to form the drum. I’m still learning how to build lyres, and for now I am mostly experimenting with different materials rather than different designs. But I’m having a lot of fun doing it! The only other change besides materials, and the crossbar where be bridge placement. On the last prototype it was way too high, on this one I am going to place the bridge in the center of the drum. By doing this, I am allowing for a richer sound, as the sounds my first lyre makes are muted because I put the bridge so high.