October 18. It's just possible that some visitors suffer lacuna in their educations so grave that they are not familiar with the adventures of Quick Draw McGraw. If you are such a person, please look to the right for a picture of the Mythic Warrior manifested as his avatar El Kabong.

I marked and messed up three left sidebridges this morning, despire wearing my lucky shirt (it has sawdust in it from day one, sweat from day one, blood from last week, and a pencil I am forever looking for because I keep forgetting it is in my pocket). I began the third bridge on my last suitable piece of cherry and messed it up, too. Fortunately, as was the case with the treble bridge, there was enough room in the blank to extend the pattern and lop off the mangled inches. And as was also the case with the treble bridge, I will always be able to point out evidence of this near calamity.

The right bridge came out easily enough. I have sloped and rounded its top in anticipation of passing the bass strings over rather than through it (the fewer bent strings I need to coax through small holes, the better)

I attached these to the soundboard by sandwiching the soundboard between the sidebridges and strips of cherry and then driving 10-12, 1-1/4 inch sheetrock screws between them. Of course, as I discovered later, I managed to put the tip of at least three screws precisely where a string needs to go (despite taking pains not to do that -- if I had wanted to...). There are fixes, as I discovered still later, because all that really matters is where the string emerges on the inner surface of the sidebridge (and that less than you might think). One or two (or five) strings exerting more than optimum pressure on the sidebridge should be no problem (87 was a problem).

So from 7:45 till 10:30, I made sidebridges. From 11:00 AM until sometime tomorrow morning, I've been restringing the dulcimer. It's much slower with used strings; they grab and tangle and have to be straightened out with needle-nosed pliers in order to pass through the sidebridge(s). Still. I only have 11 of 29 courses to go. A few of those in place need some work to bring them up from two strings to three (clear a path, find a spare...), but we know from many examples that courses of two strings work just fine. So if there are a few strings missing for a while, that will be among the least of my worries.

October 19 Restrung at 10:30 after 3.5 hours. The last two strings I installed were fresh replacements from the basement. What a difference after 84 used strings! Only one note is a (mere) double course; the rest are three-string courses (for dealing with steel incursions into drilled pathways: Dremel Tool). I am where I was on October 16 about 11:00 o'clock.

 

El Kabong, (September 28, 1959, to 1962), preparing to bring justice to the west by clobbering assorted villains over their black hats with what appears to be a D28.

Spoiler warning:
The Masked Avenger is really Quick Draw McGraw
with a cape, a mask, and an odd little hat.

 

Marking positions for holes in a cherry blank
for the troublesome left sidebridge.

 

 

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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