Making Parts: Slicing Side Sets
About half of the labor that goes into our instruments is pure hand work - sanding, scraping, and polishing. I do the scraping and sanding on the raw wood, then Richard will put on the lacquer, sand in between coats of finish, and finally polish the instrument with steel wool. Another third of the labor goes into assembly of the instrument - there is quite a bit of fitting and gluing done. That last little bit of labor is what I was working on today - making parts!
This morning, one of my jobs was making side sets for our FSH series dulcimers. Doing something like this is very repetitive and boring, but with the right tools, it goes fairly fast and lets us get back to all the little details that we need to do by hand. For something small like side sets, I use one of our smaller saws.
I take my blanks - in this case, I'm slicing a chunk of cherry - and slice them on our medium sized band saw. We have other saws that we use for bigger pieces of wood.
A batch of sides ready to be sanded down to finished thickness. If you look carefully, you can see a pencil line on the top of the pieces. That is to help me make sure I keep the slices in order so we can book match them.
When we do bigger pieces of wood, we need to use a bigger saw. Our large resaw is practically an antique, but it can handle slicing planks of wood about 20" across. We use it when we are cutting pieces that we use for soundboards and backs. The video below shows my Dad and me slicing walnut for mountain dulcimer backs.
Like with everything we do in the shop, we are careful to wear our protective gear. I usually don't wear the full face protector and hard hat, but this tool can throw out a lot of splinters.