Kerfed Sides

[JimLowther]

I had the opportunity to examine a 19th century Appalacian dulcimer
recently. I saw something that I have not seen before. The sides on
the dulcimer were kerfed--the whole side, not just separate top and
bottom kerfing as found on acoustic guitars. The sides looked to be
about 1/4 to 3/8 inch think, with about a 1/8 deep saw kerfs spaced
about a quater inch apart. This is my gues peeping a nd feeling
through the small soundholes. In a couple of places I think the kerf
must have gotten a bit too deep, as there were a couple of definite
folds in the sides.

Has anyone seen anything like this before?

Best wishes,

Dr. Jim Lowther

[JimLowther]

Did mydescription make sense?

[Nick Odell]

Your description made perfect sense to me. I just didn't reply because
I haven't seen anything like it before.

I'm not planning to change the way I make dulcimers as a result of
this sudden, new knowledge though. Although that might also be because
I still have a dozen or so kits, intended to be constructed in the
more conventional way, left over from the time, many years ago, when I
was doing part of the work myself and selling the part finished work
as kits.

Nick

[JimLowther]

On May 10, 11:53 am, Nick Odell <n...@themusicworkshop.plus.com>
wrote:

I still have a couple of incompletes here as well. I am determined to
get through them, though, and also rebuild one of my earlier dulcimers
that I built before I had as much experience with techniques and
materials.

Given the whole suggested prevenance of something called an
"Appalacian" dulcimer I have always been curious about how this
instrument evolved in its primitive setting. I have wondered how one
could cut thin wood before the days of powered bandsaws and thickness
sanders. The top and bottom were a bit thicker than what I use but
thinner than the kerfed sides I saw. I wonder if you could kerf the
top and back and then plane or sand to the depth of the kerf.

This dulcimer also had a carved animal head in place of a scroll on
the peg head. Maybe a dog or a wolf.

[Alan D.]

>
>I still have a couple of incompletes here as well. I am determined to
>get through them, though, and also rebuild one of my earlier dulcimers
>that I built before I had as much experience with techniques and
>materials.
>
>Given the whole suggested prevenance of something called an
>"Appalacian" dulcimer I have always been curious about how this
>instrument evolved in its primitive setting. I have wondered how one
>could cut thin wood before the days of powered bandsaws and thickness
>sanders. The top and bottom were a bit thicker than what I use but
>thinner than the kerfed sides I saw. I wonder if you could kerf the
>top and back and then plane or sand to the depth of the kerf.
>
>This dulcimer also had a carved animal head in place of a scroll on
>the peg head. Maybe a dog or a wolf.
>
>Best wishes,
>
>Dr. Jim Lowther

Jim, believe it or not folks were doing wood work before Ben Franklin
"invented" electricity <BBG> The usual method for furniture building was a
water powered circular saw, I mean BIG circular saw to rip off planks. These
then would be cut into thinner stock with either an Overhead/under two man bow
saw or for finer stuff there were treadle type vertical bow saws. Look into a
series of books by Irving Sloan for more great info on this and other old timy'
tools and such. Also in one of the Foxfire books there was an interview with a
fiddle maker in the Ozarks and he described his hand process. Once a board was
roughed out it was usually thicknessed with a series of planes to the desired
final thickness. If you have ever done this just to see what is involved you
will _really_ appreciate a big bandsaw, jointer, and thickness sander. Still,
something to be said for the contemplative hand process if you aren't trying
to make a living pumping out product, but the first step in that process is
learning how to sharpen tools.

Alan D.

[Ecnerwal]

In article <part1of1.1.Q...@ue.ph>,

Alan D. <SPAMN...@dunwellguitar.com> wrote:

> >
> >I still have a couple of incompletes here as well. I am determined to
> >get through them, though, and also rebuild one of my earlier dulcimers
> >that I built before I had as much experience with techniques and
> >materials.
> >
> >Given the whole suggested prevenance of something called an
> >"Appalacian" dulcimer I have always been curious about how this
> >instrument evolved in its primitive setting. I have wondered how one
> >could cut thin wood before the days of powered bandsaws and thickness
> >sanders. The top and bottom were a bit thicker than what I use but
> >thinner than the kerfed sides I saw. I wonder if you could kerf the
> >top and back and then plane or sand to the depth of the kerf.

You can. Commonly just a mark around the edge, which you'd plane down
to. Kerfs would be extra time/work.

> >This dulcimer also had a carved animal head in place of a scroll on
> >the peg head. Maybe a dog or a wolf.
> >
> >Best wishes,
> >
> >Dr. Jim Lowther
>
> Jim, believe it or not folks were doing wood work before Ben Franklin
> "invented" electricity <BBG> The usual method for furniture building was a
> water powered circular saw, I mean BIG circular saw to rip off planks.

Gang saws were also common - possibly more so. Spitting boards out
without a saw was also done. As always, there are tricks that make that
far less "impossible" than you might at first think, not knowing the
tricks.

> These
> then would be cut into thinner stock with either an Overhead/under two man
> bow
> saw or for finer stuff there were treadle type vertical bow saws.

Don't need a treadle. With a proper (rip) sharp blade, a frame resaw
will allow you to do things with a tool that costs $5 and your time to
make and hangs on the wall in very little space that you thought you
needed a one-ton bandsaw to do. You do need to pay attention, but the
same is true with the giant bandsaw. After which planes and scrapers
will tidy it up.

http://www.hyperkitten.com/woodworking/resaw.php3

> Look into a
> series of books by Irving Sloan for more great info on this and other old
> timy'
> tools and such. Also in one of the Foxfire books there was an interview with
> a
> fiddle maker in the Ozarks and he described his hand process. Once a board
> was
> roughed out it was usually thicknessed with a series of planes to the desired
> final thickness. If you have ever done this just to see what is involved you
> will _really_ appreciate a big bandsaw, jointer, and thickness sander. Still,
> something to be said for the contemplative hand process if you aren't trying
> to make a living pumping out product, but the first step in that process is
> learning how to sharpen tools.

The hand process need not be overly contemplative, and for non-mass
production can actually be faster (less time spent setting up machines
and figuring out how to keep your fingers.) It's also a great deal more
compact, shop-wise. Of course, you may need some hand tools you never
knew existed, and yes, they need to be sharp. But you can remove a
buttload of wood with a scrub plane in very little time. Mine will take
off 1/8" (3mm) thick "shavings" when in good trim. That cuts a board
down to size very quickly, if you are happy to lose the part you are
cutting off. I've made small boards from a nice hunk of firewood that
way...

I personally went two directions at once some time ago - getting into
both CNC routing and effective use of hand tools at about the same time,
albeit with similar reasons (both help me keep my fingers, though the
tools are still perfectly capable of cutting them off, as with anything
that cuts wood.) The crying shame of it was that if I had figured out
hand tools before college, I would not have had the long dry spell of
college and moving around after it where "I didn't have space for a
woodshop" (based on the "pushing sticks through large machines" school
of woodworking, as taught at my high school. Yes, I'm so old that wood
shop was actually still taught at my high school.)

As for Foxfire, as I have become older and wiser I've figured out that
one reason few things I tried to do based on Foxfire books worked was
that the folks doing the interviews were high school students who often
missed some important aspect of what they were writing about. Fine for
english majors interested in reading about olde times, not so good if
you want to actually do the things described. Take with a large lump of
salt.

There are many books about "olde timey stuff" and a lot of them turn out
to be not great, as they are written by writers, not
old-tool-woodworkers, for the most part - I'm not sure about Irving
Sloan - Eric Sloane loved to write about early American woodworking, and
collected tools, but it becomes clear he didn't do much of it. Alex
Bealer has a book on the subject I've come to loathe more the more that
I learn and do.

The old tools mailing list is probably the best source of information on
actually using tools, though it's split between real users and
collectors to some extent. If you see galoots, you've found the right
folks. On TV, the woodwrights shop on PBS is one place where old tools
get used as intended, and quickly, though it can get a bit hokey. Roy
Underhill (the host) also writes books of the "more worth reading"
class, since he actually uses the tools. They might have some watchable
on the web by now, I haven't looked recently.

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by
Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.

[Kevin Hall]

>
> As for Foxfire, as I have become older and wiser I've figured out that
> one reason few things I tried to do based on Foxfire books worked was
> that the folks doing the interviews were high school students who often
> missed some important aspect of what they were writing about. Fine for
> english majors interested in reading about olde times, not so good if
> you want to actually do the things described. Take with a large lump of
> salt.
>
> There are many books about "olde timey stuff" and a lot of them turn out
> to be not great, as they are written by writers, not
> old-tool-woodworkers, for the most part - I'm not sure about Irving
> Sloan - Eric Sloane loved to write about early American woodworking, and
> collected tools, but it becomes clear he didn't do much of it. Alex
> Bealer has a book on the subject I've come to loathe more the more that
> I learn and do.
>
> The old tools mailing list is probably the best source of information on
> actually using tools, though it's split between real users and
> collectors to some extent. If you see galoots, you've found the right
> folks. On TV, the woodwrights shop on PBS is one place where old tools
> get used as intended, and quickly, though it can get a bit hokey. Roy
> Underhill (the host) also writes books of the "more worth reading"
> class, since he actually uses the tools. They might have some watchable
> on the web by now, I haven't looked recently.
>

When I started out in luthiery in the 60s there was very little in the way
of written resource material available, unlike todays' situation where
we're up to our wobbly bits in books, tapes, DVDs etc. The few books
available varied widely in quality. The most commonly available were the
Sloane series; one on classical construction, one on steel strings and one
on repairs. His repair book was fairly decent, having been basically
dictated to him by the guys in the Martin repair dept. for the most part,
but the steel string construction volume was dreadful. While old Irving may
have cobbled together a rubber-strung box or two I really doubt he actually
built any steel strings and I suspect that slim volume has put more would-be
builders off the idea than any other.

Another book (not Sloanes') on making your own bluegrass banjo stands out in
memory as well. Earl Scruggs had something to do with it but its' pages had
very little to do with a real banjo. The instructions for inlaying the
fingerboard were amazing. The basic concept had the builder covering the
fingerboard with masking tape, drawing the pattern on the tape, cutting
the outline of the pattern through the tape with a sharp blade then using a
sandblaster to excavate the cavities which would accept the cut pearl.
Amazing.

An old time writer on hunting and shooting once addressed the topic of
writers who hadn't done what they wrote about when he said " It's a lot
easier to make a 600 yard shot with a typewriter than a .270".

To get back to the topic in hand; our society would be a lot better off if
our schools went back to teaching the fundamentals of woodwork, metal work
and a few other trades rather than condemning our youngsters to a future in
which very few have any idea how to hone a plane iron or turn a simple part
in a lathe.

KH

[dhaji...@gmail.com]

You got that right. My son is making a living in CNC programming, but cut his teeth on mills, lathes, saws and drill presses. As a result, he really understands materials and the best way to work with them.

Dave