Putting A Crushed Dulcimer Back Together

Last week I had two older dulcimers come through the shop for repairs - one from 1986 and one from 1998. One of them was a Folkcraft dulcimer that had been severely crushed. The back was broken in a couple of places and one of the sides was splintered pretty badly.

I've removed the back from the dulcimer. You can see there are clearly several pieces, and the sides are in even worse shape.

Luckily, the owner of the dulcimer was able to send us all of the pieces. I've put it back together like a puzzle. I had to glue it up in several stages, and I also gave it a patch on the inside to give it some strength.

I replaced the back on the dulcimer rather than patching the old one, so I pulled the label from the original back to put back in the instrument.

Here is a view of the instrument showing the repaired side and new back. After getting a fresh coat of lacquer, the repair is almost impossible to see.

Another instrument that came in for repairs was a nice, older, koa instrument by a builder I wasn't familiar with. The instrument itself was pretty, but the fret placement was highly inaccurate so the instrument could not play in tune. The fix for this one was to actually replace the fretboard! I carefully removed the old fretboard, and then added a new one with the frets properly spaced. I also added an electronic pickup while it was in the shop.

Because I couldn't match the wood exactly, I added a couple of accent layers. The alternating dark and light mimic the variation found in the original koa.