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Getting creative in an airport with Dana Saylor.

Met Eli, age 9, and discussed the traditions of mountain dulcimers. “On the Internet, they all look different…”

Yes, Eli, they do.

I am so glad I have a space with The Guild @ 980. It’s starting to feel like home.

Today, I used the trimmed off top of the peg block to create a three-dimensional template for the angled sides of the peg box.

I then used the three dimensional template to setup and cut the angles for the exposed sides of the peg box.

Finished up by designing the nearly logarithmic spiral shape for the scroll-head.

Starting tomorrow, and for the next week (!) I won’t able to be in the shop for my daily creative time. I have several ideas bouncing around in my head for what I’ll create though …

I spent my creative time this evening knocking around musical ideas with Caspian (2013) and Esperanza (2016), my most recently built mountain dulcimers.

I worked on just four quick cuts to form the angles at the base of the peg block, then filed sanded them to 100 grit.

They line up pretty well with the design diagram, so that’ll do for tonight.

Tonight, I made some rough cuts on the perimeter of the redwood back then played around with how my side-bending-and-gluing jig will fit to the tail block and peg block.

My jig isn’t terribly sophisticated (yet).

More tomorrow!

Listening to: Overseas

I widened the central section of the peg box to 7/8″, and added some lines to the outside cut pattern to let me carve a scroll head, though I actually don’t know how to do that.

I cut each of the outside edges to 9/16″, and then trimmed the central section.  Here’s all three:

I sanded them flat and glued them up. We’ll see what this looks like tomorrow.

Also: I like birds.