Mountain Dulcimer Building

Scratchbuilt means scratching your head a lot!

A Pictorial Essay!
(35 step-by-step pics!)

By Jim Bracegirdle

Where do I begin? Well I had a dulcimer with a VSL of 27" and it was proving to be a little painful for some of the chord formations for my small hands. I didn't have any knowledge about scale length whenever I bought it. Also I wanted to play four equidistant strings and the fingerboard was only 1 1/4" wide, so because I had this piece of walnut 7/8" x 36" x 4 3/4"sitting around (for 30 years at the least) I decided to make one to fit my hands and method of playing.

After reading all the archives and FAQ's on "EverythingDulcimer" I decided on making it with a 1 1/2" wide fingerboard and a VSL of 25 1/2". This would be better for the string spacing and my fingerpicking. Also the shorter VSL would be kinder for the chord formations with less stretching for my small left hand.

After I cut the 1 1/2" wide fingerboard plus 1/8" for the saw blade I was not going to have a very wide dulcimer with what I had left. It gave me enough for a 6" wide dulcimer. I dodged around the old screwnail holes and got very lucky with the bookmatched back. I had enough for the peghead and heel and swapped a buddy a nice piece of Cherry for some quartersawn Spruce to make the top (soundboard). The dimensions of the dulcimer are.........35" overall length, 29 1/2" sides and back. The sides are 2 5/8" deep for better bass response. (I again did homework here on the Dulcimer Building forum FAQ's regarding tone, timbre and accompaniment for trying to sing Irish ballads. The 3 1/8" bookmatched back is all I could squeeze out of my material and the final width after trimming was a wee bit over 6".

Now let's get building!!

------> To the first picture!