Doug Berch

I leave tomorrow for St. Louis. I’ll be doing a house concert with my dear old friend Robert Fishbone. Robert’s talents are many and sometimes not easy to define. He is a musician, story teller, performance artist, keynote performer and speaker and entrepreneur but in essence his talents are something more than the sum of those parts

Robert is also the friend who helped me figure out that it was really time to leave the job I had as the showroom manager at Elderly Instruments and get back to being a musician and luthier. I thank him profusely on the good days!

And this past weekend my friend Robin Zahir came for a visit. Robin is a photographer and designer with the eyes and heart of a poet. He is also one of the finest people I know and is deeply in my heart. He took lots of pictures and will soon be designing the covers for the two CDs. You’ll be seeing his beautiful photographs here and there on these pages in the near future.

So with finished masters in hand I decided to make some pre-release copies of the CDs to bring with me to the gig in St. Louis. Burning high quality CDs at home is no problem. And hey, you can go to any office supply store and get labels and inserts and a program to make your CDs look fairly professional in the comfort of your own familiar dwelling.

That is, in theory, what I have been attempting to do tonight.

It took me about four hours to design some fairly nice covers and labels using a few of Robin’s photographs.

And after the printer trashed a few dozen or so inserts, and after my wonderful wife took apart and reassembled 25 or so CD cases we noticed that right there on the front cover I proudly displayed that this album contained Hammered Duclimer Instrumentals!

Yes, that’s right, Duclimer!

And it’s late and I have a long drive tomorrow and I was going to do the setup on two dulcimers before I left but instead I will be going to the office supply store for more labels and printing inserts and assembling CDs.

But enough whining. Here’s an old picture of a woman in a spectacular chicken costume.

Life is good.

Woodworking is often a dusty business. There is sawdust that gets through the mask or the quick sanding job that seems to justify not taking the 10 seconds it takes to put on a mask. My shop also has a certain amount of dust that is almost always present and this often gets stirred up and released into the air. This leaves my nose and sinuses to do the work of filtering out the dust.

I don’t think I’m alone in this.

I also have seasonal allergies that can clog up my sinuses and leave me feeling as if in a fog. This is not a good state to be in when working.

Nasal irrigation has helped provide a lot of relief from the above symptoms. It has helped me and maybe it will help you. The basic procedure is to use some type of device that lets you pour salinated water through your nose.

Please keep in mind that I am not licensed to do anything to anyone nor am I offering medical advice. I am just suggesting that you look at the following articles that may help you keep your nose clean in regards to all the stuff you inhale in the shop and the environment in general. Some of the articles will suggest devices, formulas to make the proper saline mixture, etc.

The Mayo Clinic has an video explaining a method of nasal irrigation. I imagine the folks at the Mayo clinic know what they are talking about.

NPR has an article and audio piece on using a traditional nasal irrigation device called a neti pot. This is the method I use.

And finally, Wikipedia has an article with links that can help you learn more than you ever wanted to know about keeping your nose clean.

This clip is from “The World,” a New York City newspaper dated August 30th, 1900:

Crockett’s Dulcimer

“Here is a dulcimer which belonged to the great pioneer Davy Crockett. It was made by a French army officer who served under Lafayette. It is now owned by Geo. F. Crockett of Philadelphia, a second cousin of the original owner.”

I was joining a two piece maple dulcimer back this afternoon.

I shoot the joint with a jointer plane; a Stanley #7. The throat is set tight and I hone the blade with a back bevel which roughly gives me a 55 degree cutting angle. Having the plane set up this way lets me make very light passes and leaves a surface free of tear-out on most hardwoods.

After shooting the joint I saw this small pile of thin, fluffy maple shavings sitting on my bench. I picked them up. The sun coming through the window fell on the shavings.

I find so much joy in this.

These four dulcimers are in the home stretch. Today they will get one more coat of finish and in a few days I will be rubbing out the finishes and setting them up.

I tend towards a thin finish on the soundboard and a few more coats on the back and sides. The thinner finish on the soundboard allows more of the tonal characteristics of the wood to be heard while the slightly thicker finish on the back and sides helps protect the dulcimer a little more from normal wear and tear.

I am currently at the finishing stage of making two CDs and five dulcimers. It is at this stage that my eyes and ears become increasingly more critical of my work.

What began as a burst of creative force transmutes into discernment. The dark side of this process for me is when the critical eye or ear focuses on faults rather than the complete message of the work at hand.

I aspire to do the best work I am capable of yet I also have to have a reasonable expectation of what defines the best work I can accomplish.

And what defines the best work I am capable of executing? Is it the overall design, look, feel and tone of an instrument or that slight imperfection in the finish? Is it the overall experience of a piece of music or that note I sang that seems a little bit off pitch?

Should I leave things as they are because they are working beautifully or redo some aspect of the work because it could be a little better?

Surely it will be even better next time but what about now?

I’m curious to hear from other creative people about their thoughts on this process. Please comment if so inspired.

Woodworker Qing made elaborately carved wooden bell stands.

When others saw the completed bell stands, they were startled and thought they must have been created by supernatural beings.

The Marquis of Lu saw one of them and asked: “What special art (artistic skill) do you have to be able to do this?”

He replied, “Your humble servant is merely an artisan. What special artistic ability could I have?

However, I do use one system.

When I’m about to create a bell stand, I’m careful not to expend too much of my vital energy, so I have to first settle my mind and heart in calmness.

For three days I prepare myself by giving up on any ideas of praise or rewards for my work.

The next five days I prepare by not being concerned whether my work will be criticized or considered to be not perfect enough.

Then for seven days I prepare myself by forgetting about the prescribed shapes of things including the shape of my own body. By that time I’ve lost all consideration as to what the royal court would demand of me, concentrate completely on my task, and outside influences just disappear.

Then I enter the mountain forests and observe the naturalness of the heavens. By seeing that all the shapes around me are complete of themselves, I can envision a completed bell stand. At that point I can actually start working with my hands, but not until then.

It’s because I use the heavens to fit perfectly with the heavens that some suspect my tools were used by spirits. That’s all there is to it!”

-Chuang Tzu

Many instruments with flat tops and backs actually have some slight arching built into them. The arching ads stiffness and strength to the thin top and back.

On guitars the soundboard must not only create the sound of the instrument but it also must resist the tension of six strings. Traditional dulcimer designs usually employ the finger board carrying most of the string load, however some slight arching of the top and back can allow me to make them thinner and more resonant.

The arching also helps the top and back resist warping when the humidity changes. I consider a certain amount of “movement” of the top and back to be a part of the nature of a lightly built instrument. I prefer this to having an instrument that is built like a brick as they usually sound as good as a brick!

First I take the rough sawn brace stock and plane it to thickness using a bench hook and a plane.

My method for arching the braces is simple. I have a jig that is nothing more than a piece of wood slightly thinner than the thickness of my braces. The ends of one edge are a little higher than the center. I figured out the proportions of the jig by eye, experimentation, and feel and to get the desired amount of arching.

The hole in the jig serves an important purpose; it allows me to hang the jig on a nail so I don’t sweep it up and throw it in the scrap bin!

I put the jig in the front vice of my bench. The straight part goes against the bottom of the vice and the edge with the elevations faces up.

I place the brace on top of the jig with the quartered grain running perpendicular to the floor. I use a block of wood to press the center of the brace down till it touches the low part of the jig. I hold it there with one hand and tighten the vice with the other.

Since the jig is a little thinner than the braces the result is a brace that is firmly held in the vice and bowed down at the center. The surface facing up and out of the vice is the surface that will be glued to the instrument after the brace leaves the jig.

Since the center of the brace is pressed down the ends are higher. I plane the top of the brace flat. Once this surface is flat I open up the vice and the planed surface of the brace springs up into a perfect arch that is ready to be glued to the soundboard.

Here you can see the planed surface of the brace against a straight edge.

Notice that the ends of the brace gradually taper away from the center. It is not easy to see in the photograph but it is there. This is the slight arch that I have aimed for.

The other day I was thinking it would be nice to have a small and accurate table saw. I have a portable contractors saw that works well but I wanted a tool that had the feeling of solidity that only cast iron provides. An aluminum table might be great for a picnic but it feels lacking on my table saw.

So imagine my surprise when I saw a listing for an old Craftsman table saw less than a mile from my door!

The price was reasonable and the saw now sits in my garage awaiting some tender loving care to bring it back to a better life.

It works! The model is #103.23834 and it probably dates to the early 1950’s. It takes an 8″ blade and has a 1 hp Dayton motor. It also came with the rip fence and miter gauge.

The table is rusty but salvageable.

Some parts are frozen so I see a can of WD40 in my future.

It is heavy and solid and from the front it looks like a radio! How cools is that!

Here is a picture from the back. I’ll probably mount the who thing to a bench once I overhaul it

I was able to find a copy of the original manual thanks to the friendly folks at the Old Wood Working Machines site. The manual will be of great help when restoring the saw.

I’ll be using this saw for small scale work so I won’t miss the iron side wings but if you live nearby and have some to spare I might be interested

This morning I posted about some wood I was going to resaw. Some of the wood shown in today’s earlier post has been resawn as well as a few other boards.

Some of the boards needed to be flattened before they could be resawn. For the ones with a lot of twist I prefer using a wooden jack plane. It is light and glides beautifully across the wood. This plane has a fairly fine mouth for a jack plane and the blade is honed with a back bevel making the cutting edge around 55 degrees. I can quickly level and smooth these 32 inch boards. I occasionally make a pass or two with a #7 plane to determine the high spots.

Here is the bandsaw in the garage set up for resawing. I haven’t hooked up the dust collector yet. It helps but it is still a very dusty process.

And here is the resawn wood stacked on my bench. I’ll give it a few weeks to acclimate to my shop before being joined, brought to final thickness and turned into dulcimers.

Now I’m going to sweep up the sawdust, empty the dust collector and shower away the sawdust.

It was a good afternoon.