It has been a busy day in the shop; sawdust is everywhere but mostly on me! After several experimental prototypes I have begun making the dulcimers that will soon be available for sale.
I brought one of the prototypes into the studio and it recorded beautifully!
Each dulcimer will be somewhat unique but for the time [...]
Category Archive for 'Lutherie'
Many years ago I was playing a friends homemade fretless banjo and a young boy who was listening asked if I could also play a “real” banjo.
I told him that the banjo I was playing was real and if it wasn’t how could I possibly be playing it?
His response was something like “You know what [...]
Most photographs of craftsman’s benches in woodworking magazines look like they were staged. There is usually a plane or chisel, a discrete shaving or two, a project in a recognizable stage of construction and a level of cleanliness adequate for performing surgery.
I think my bench looks more like what most woodworkers and luthiers typically [...]
I fret dulcimers after the instrument is completely assembled. Some dulcimer makers fret the fingerboard before gluing it to the soundboard and have good results but I prefer to true up the fingerboard once I know the fretboard won’t move or warp during the construction process.
I use a long sanding block to sand the [...]
No, this is not about sanding hands. It’s about using your hands to sand.
There isn’t much new to say about hand sanding. The basics of sanding are very simple. Each progressively finer grit leaves scratches finer than it’s predecessor. Finer grits are used until the scratches left are no longer noticeable. In general one [...]
I have received more inquiries about my shop made thickness sander than I have for any other post! Go figure!
Though a thickness sander saves time I must admit that I love thicknessing thin stock the old fashioned way. I use a toothing plane, a number of bench planes and a scraper. It works well, it [...]
I have read that scrapers may be one of the earliest tools used by early humans. Though scrapers are very simple tools they are still in use today.
The basic cabinet scraper is a rectangle of steel hard enough to hold an edge but soft enough to be easily sharpened. Most scrapers are made of [...]
The reinforcement strip and back braces are being shaped with chisels and scrapers. The chisel in the center is a crank necked paring chisel. The cranked neck of the chisel keeps my hand clear of the work.
The sides are dampened with water and sandwiched with a flexible thermal blanket between two sheets of flexible steel. [...]
Many stringed instruments traditionally have binding around the edges of the soundboard. The binding protects the exposed end grain of the soundboard from damage.Dulcimer soundboards usually are not bound. I assume this was because many early dulcimer makers were not trained luthiers and they may not have had the tools, technique or inclination to add [...]
Here are a few photos of what I’ve been up to in the shop.
The peg head is sawn to rough shape with a Japanese style saw. Japanese saws cut on the pull stroke so they are easy to control. They also cut with great precision and leave the surface of the wood relatively smooth.
Once the [...]
