I can hear the jokes already….

But seriously, any woodworker knows that different woods have different fragrances.  ”Fragrance” is a word that often seems associated with a smell one find pleasant while “smell” is often associated  with a smell that might just be a smell, for better or for worse.

The inspiration for this post came moments ago while cutting the binding channel on a dulcimer made of Adirondack spruce and big-leaf maple with walnut linings.

Suddenly the shop smelled like chocolate!

While each wood has a distinctive fragrance I had never worked that combination simultaneously; what a discovery!

If not for the heavy snow falling at the moment I would be on my way to get some chocolate!

Incoming search terms:

• worse dulcimer wood
• worse wood for dulcimer

I envy my friends my woodworker friends who make things other than musical instruments. Even the pickiest of them often come home from a sawmill with beautiful, usable wood. For stringed instruments the choices quickly narrow down. For most parts of a dulcimer I will only use quarter sawn wood.

I generally have a hard time finding quartered wood because it is more expensive for the mill to cut. Often I may only find the few boards that came out quartered during the sawing process.

Once I find quartered wood I dig through the piles to find stock of usable dimensions. Often lumber will be too narrow, too short, or too thin to yield enough slices when resawing. After finding quartered lumber of usable dimensions I check the wood for run out, bang on it to get an idea of how resonant it will be, check for flaws, etc. If I’m lucky I’ll find a few pieces that meet my requirements. At that point I look for grain and figure that I find appealing.

Here’s some walnut that will soon be milled for fretboards and other parts.

Once it is squared up and rough sawn I let it age and work out any internal tension that may cause it to warp before bringing it to final dimensions. Usually a certain percentage of the wood, hopefully low, will not prove to be stable enough to use.

I usually do my own resawing on a 14″ bandsaw but recently these two guys, Horatio and Zebediah showed up at my door asking for work. “What kind of work do you do,” I asked. “Resawing wood the old way, the good way, the hard way,” they replied in unison, which kind of  freaked me out a bit.

It seemed that fate had stepped in. I was able to help these two joyful wanderers find suitable employment while freeing up some of my time to search for more wood!

Incoming search terms:

• dulcimer fretboard
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• SAWMILL PARTS

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.