{"id":1144,"date":"2016-04-22T07:24:27","date_gmt":"2016-04-22T12:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenonandspline.com\/?p=1144"},"modified":"2016-04-22T07:24:27","modified_gmt":"2016-04-22T12:24:27","slug":"string-it-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenonandspline.com\/blog\/archives\/1144","title":{"rendered":"String it up!"},"content":{"rendered":"
This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series Building a Mountain Dulcimer<\/a><\/div>

This past weekend as planned my helper and I spent a couple more hours finishing up our new “Back to Basics” dulcimer. Annalise was excited about finishing this up – as was I – so shortly after breakfast we retreated to the shop to get back to work.<\/p>\n

The Tuners and Tail<\/strong><\/p>\n

The tuners were first. The head was essentially ready, waiting only for the small pilot holes needed to affix the tuners. Annalise quickly installed all four tuners.<\/p>\n

The plans suggest using 4 small pins that the strings loop over. I didn’t care for this look, so instead I crafted a small\u00a0acoustic-guitar style tail that we glued to the bottom. I was slightly concerned about the stresses from the strings\u00a0shearing this block off – especially\u00a0because it was glued on after<\/em> applying the finish. Therefore we carefully sanded a bit of the finish before gluing and then, for a bit of extra insurance, and because we thought they’d look nice, we added a couple brass screws to the tail.<\/p>\n

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Attaching the tuners<\/p><\/div>\n

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Brass screws to reinforce and dress up the tail<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nut and Bridge<\/strong><\/p>\n

I crafted a nut and bridge out of a couple Corian sample blocks purchased last year. The band saw sliced neatly through the sample blocks. And with a bit of sanding on the oscillating belt sander, and some adjustments to the nut slot with a chisel, the pieces were installed and ready for notching.<\/p>\n

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Time to try it out!<\/p><\/div>\n

Lessons Learned<\/strong><\/p>\n

We followed the original book design that calls for a guitar style headstock – with the string posts\u00a0oriented vertically. Unfortunately the angle of the headstock is too shallow to pull the strings down into the nut slot with sufficient force to\u00a0keep them there. I installed a couple Fender-style string trees – which mostly<\/em> work – though there is still a tendency for a string to jump its slot if strummed too aggressively.<\/p>\n

This isn’t tragic and I may put some more time into this in the future to improve the situation. However it’s still a very playable instrument that we’ve been having a lot of fun with.<\/p>\n