Top and headstock plate

Before I glued the top on the body I had to make the braces and glue them on the backside of the top. I made them out of spruce. The rough shape is chisseled out and after that I used my disksander to smooth them. The disksander I resently got from my father who made it him self.

The braces are glued just under the sound hole and fan out to the sides. I do not have pics of the clamping but this is the end result.

The sides with the neck attached to them:

I prepared the mold to have calmps build-in but I decided to use my spool clamps instead.

 The result:

The last thing I did this week was make and glue the headstock plate. I made it out of zebrano like the body. I first made sure the headstock was level with a sanding block. The glue was then applied to the headstock and with some masking tape as hinges the plate was glued to the headstock. With a wooden block under the clamps the clamping pressure is spread out evenly across the headstock.

After the clamps where removed it looks like this:

And the total picture:

The headstockplate and the top still have overhang which has to be removed in later stages of the build.

Neck work

I did some work on the neck in the past week. After the heel was unclamped I had to make it thinner to about 15 mm. I reduced the wood with my drillpress and a fostnerbit. The little parts that where left after that can be removed with a chissel.

The part of the neck that is glued into the body has to get a rebate to receive the sides and the top. I did that the same way with the drillpress. First I cut a groove all around the neck. After that I used the drillpress to reduce the wood by 2 mm.

The neck can now be glued into the body. I put a piece of backing paper on the bottom of the mold so I do not glue the neck to the mold.

The clamps have to stay there for a couple of hours. After that the top can be glued on the body. But that is for another post.

Stick Dulcimer Neck

This afternoon I finaly returned to working on the Stick Dulcimer. The neck had to be cut to length. I decided to go for the shorter scale length (ment for the Gdg tuning but also Dad tuning is possible). With the plans I determined where to cut it and then cut if the excess wood. 

A piece of the part that came of I used to make up the heel of the neck. I cut it to the correct length and thickness and glued it to the neck.

This has to dry now. After that the rebates for the sides and the top have to be measured out and cut. But that is for another day, today I had enough excitement.

New workshop

It has been little over year since my last post. This has several reassons. In the first place we moved to a new house about a year ago. This brought a lot if work along with it and thus a lot of time which I could not use for instrument building. The new house had a small stone shed next to it which had become my new workshop. 

I had to insulate it which took a while too but in the end of last year it was ready to use. 

I also made a guitar stand back then which can hold guitars I am working on.

In the front the lute guitar I am working on. The middle one is a guitar I bought in Indonesia once, it only needs a new low E string. The twelve string has a lot of issues. I will start on that one when my current projects are finished. All in all I am really pleased with my own desicaded workshop although it is tiny ;). After this all was finished I had a kind of medical issue which has occupied me for the first three months of 2014. It is not better yet but at least I can spend some time in my workshop again so updates will become more regular again.