Tuesday, May 01, 2007
IADs, SFI to the rescue
Some of you will recall that IADs, Instrument Acquisitive Disorder syndrome, is a disease for which, sadly, there seems to be no cure. During Betty's Spring Dulcimer Week I engage in my annual 'cleansing' at SFI. Here's the shop and staff of Smakula Fretted Instruments -

This year my projects were a Pollmann banjo manufactured about 1890 that I bought from Grant at Clifftop and a 'bathtub' lap dulcimer that I got off ebay for $9.95 plus shipping (which was almost double the purchase price).
The banjo had a split head and a bowed neck. The dulcimer was missing a few frets, had a crack in the back and a badly split top - but it has a very nice, carved fiddle scroll!
I became so intent on alleviating my 'symptoms' that I forgot to start photographing my progress until I had almost completed the banjo. The remedies involved clamping the neck with a reverse bow and heating it in the 'easy bake oven' of the front seat of a closed pickup truck sitting in the Sun. It gets VERY hot in there! The banjo head, being calfskin, involved wetting and stretching and clamping a new calfskin head over the pot. Here's a photo of the pieces after repair but before assembly -

and here's a photo assembled and strung -

The dulcimer was more interesting and I remembered to photograph it. Here's the two halves of the top being glued together -


The scroll being attached -

The bracing being glued inside the top -

And the top being glued on -

So here's how it looks now -

I still have to do the frets, cut a slot in the front of the scroll for the nut, do a little cosmetic work and string it. That'll be next year. We're thinking that with a body this large we might try heavier strings and tune it an octave lower.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home