Dulcimer Sculptor With A Router
August 16, 2024
Good Morning, Y'all
Happy Friday! Hopefully you've all found some time to make music with your dulcimers this week? If you haven't, yet, today's the day to do it! Vacuuming the living room isn't nearly as important as making music. Trust me - I'm the voice of experience with making that choice...
We've all been busy in the shop this week - as usual. Dad's been making rims (a.k.a. bodies) for LAP-JOs. He starts with a solid slab of mahogany, then removes the inside and outside parts using a router, until he's gotten the desired shape. Here's what a rim looks like before it is sanded and attached to the neck:
LAP-JO® rim. It's one piece of solid mahogany.
The camera perspective makes this rim look "oval," but the rim is actually perfectly round, and will provide good support for the banjo head when we're ready to finish this LAP-JO in a few weeks. You can see holes around the outer edges - these holes hold the bolts and lugs that the J-hooks use to tension the head.
Here's a photo of a finished LAP-JO, so you can see where the rim goes:
Finished LAP-JO
We do have a few LAP-JOs in stock this week. We've been making LAP-JOs since February of 2016 - almost a full decade already!.
Christmas Time Is Coming
Pam's been making cases, and putting books into inventory (a lot of Christmas books this week - who would have thought?)
We stock 24 different books of Christmas music for mountain dulcimer. If a non-musician saw the number of Christmas books we've shipped the past few weeks, they would think we were crazy. But musicians? We all know that it takes time to learn new repertoire. And even though it is mosquito/hurricane/heat wave season for "normal people," musicians know that it is also the best time of year to start getting ready for the holidays!
Here's a link to our our complete catalog of Christmas Books for Mountain Dulcimer.
What have Casey and Cheyenne been up to? Making sawdust. Probably making a big mess, with sawdust everywhere...
Casey is on the left, Cheyenne is on the right - the sawdust is everywhere inbetween.
The two instruments Casey and Cheyenne are working on (in the photo above) will be lacquered by the end of the day - and probably on the way to their owners late next week. We generally have a handful of instruments in various stages of being built, but I would guess that half of the time it takes to make an instrument involves sandpaper.
We use sandpaper made in Finland, of all places. Before I started making dulcimers, I figured that "sandpaper is sandpaper," and bought the cheap stuff at the local hardware store. But I have since learned that the good stuff (Finnish sandpaper) is worth paying for, and makes for a better "finish." (Sorry, it's been a long week, I couldn't resist...)
And with that bit of wood shop humor, I'm going to head back to the shop to make some sawdust of my own. There's a stack of East Indian rosewood planks calling to me!
Thanks for reading, Y'all - I hope you get to make lots of good music this weekend!
Sincerely,
Richard Ash, luthier-who-would-love-to-spend-more-time-making-sawdust