Sound Hole

Now my side project with "Junior" is finished I thought it is time again to spend some time on my Stick Dulcimer build. Next up was the sound hole and rosette. It will be a pretty simple design with only a thin maple rosette around the sound hole. This is how it is done. Since the sound hole is tiny compared with the sound hole in a guitar top, I could not use my dremmel with sound hole attachment for this purpose. Instead I bought two fostner drill bits:

As you can see one is slightly bigger then the other (35 and 29 mm to be precise). I start of with the 35 mm bit to cut a rebate into the top.

Then I change to the 29 mm bit and drill all the way through to form the sound hole.

What you end up with is a sound hole with a rebate around it. This rebate no can be filled with anything you like. Some put a piece of perfling into it but a wooden rosette is also possible. I have choosen the last option and used a scrap piece of maple to cut it out of. I first drilled all the way through it using the 29 mm bit.

The I drew a line around it with a diameter of 35 mm using a little mold I drilled out of some scrap wood with the 35 mm bit. With a fret saw I sawed it out roughly (a bit to wide) and sanded it back so it fitted the rebate around the sound hole.

This ring is then glued into the rebate. As a "clamp" I used our fruit bowl which already heavy all on its own but was loaded with fruit also so I thought it would work nice. And it did.

The end result looks very nice.

Next up will be shaving and sanding the top and back to the proper thickness.