October 14. Stepped out of the shower last night with the solution to the too-deep hitch pin holes – coat hanger wire. This morning I measured the depth of the holes, the length of the pins, and determined how long the shims needed to be. A little less than 3/8's of an inch, a little more than 1/4. Five sixteenths, or close enough thereto.

Used needle nose pliers with integral wire cutters to cut up one and one fourth coat hangers into 100 shims of about the right length. Tossed the longest and the shortest, the bent, and the troubled, and went downstairs with 87 who drank by lapping up water with one hand while holding a sword in the other.

I taped over all the tuning pin holes to prevent unhappy mistakes, then dropped a coat hanger seed in each open hole.

Then I hammered in 87 hitch pins as far as they would go without almighty pounding.

Removed the tape and used the #16 drill bit to ream out all the unfilled holes on the left pin block. Messed with several schemes to know when the drill was deep enough, but it turns out that a depth gauge was unnecessary since you can tell perfectly well when you hit the bottom of the existing hole. Then I hammered in the tuning pins, leaving about 1/4 inch of fine threads above the top of the pin block.

Repeat on the right pin block.

In preparation for closing the box, I vacuumed out dust and other small detritus, then signed one of the big oak dowels.

My biggest concern today is the fit of the soundboard to the bridge supports. The two bass bridge supports and the soundboard make good contact when I fit it all together, but the short-rail end of the treble bridge support is a fraction of an inch below the soundboard. It's easy to press it down into good contact. So, OK, odds are that when I put strings over the treble bridge and bring them into tune, the soundboard will get forced down onto the bridge support. Or should I put a shim between the soundboard and the bridge? I'm going with curtain number one. If that's a mistake, maybe I can force a wedge in there somehow.

I unwrapped the strings James Jones sent and made a sorting board out of a piece of everyday plywood. Drilled several holes across one end, labelled them #5, #6, #7S, #7L... etc for each size wire. I stored all wires of each gauge in the appropriate hole where the wires can be drawn out as needed. Next I'll measure each wire and label it with its length (that sounds tedious, but compare the time it will take to measure them all once with the time it will take to measure several wires each time I want to find one).

And then there'll be nothing for it but to get a pot of coffee and start threading wire through and over and through and through and around. Over and over again. And hope that by the end of the day – Sunday, October 15 – what I will have is a musical instrument and not some kind of kitchen implement. Or an ashtray.

 

 

87 bits of metal, each a substantial fraction
of 0.144 inches in diameter and between 1/4 and
3/8 inches long. You don't often see a span micrometer
around a dulcimer project.

 

Hitch pins.

 

Tape guards the tuning pin holes against an unfortunate
mistake while hitch pins are hammered in.

 

Tuning pins and hitch pins installed.

 

Sig. "DC October 2006"

 

 

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Building: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Refinements, etc: 16 17 18 19