Project Information
My last music-oriented project proved very gratifying and instructive. In the meantime, my son developed a growing interest for guitars and asked me one for his birthday.
Back then, I was following woodgears.ca's ukulele build while realizing that this would certainly be too involved a project for me. I then stumbled upon Aaron's dulcitar project and thought that this might be much more within the reach of my skills set.
I then had a quick search on the internet for plans and studied other Lumberjock-made dulcitars such as rdwile's blogpost (which includes a great video about tuning the instrument).
Dulcitars are pretty simple to make and frankly, building one or several does constitute much difference in time investment. That is why, talking about dulcitars to some guitar playing friends who had never heard of them, I decided to make a total of 4 and give away the extra 3 instruments.
When I say that dulcitars are simple to make… it is more or less true if you follow these plans (plans link at the bottom of the page) and if you have access to a bandsaw. I do not own a bandsaw, so several operations turned out to be slightly more involved and time consuming.
Picture 1: the four finished dulcitars
Picture 2: ripping the walnut for the dulcitar bodies
Picture 3: gluing the soundboards (fir) and the back boards (ash)
Picture 4: inserting the fret wire in the proper location
Picture 5: instruments top and bottom details
Picture 6: I have access to a small cnc mill at work with which I got a small billet of brass milled to a design to be used as my mark. A quick heating over the kitchen stove turned this brass pattern into a nice woodburning tool.
What about my son ? He got his dulcitar today and appears to have found it to his liking :
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Until next time,
Back then, I was following woodgears.ca's ukulele build while realizing that this would certainly be too involved a project for me. I then stumbled upon Aaron's dulcitar project and thought that this might be much more within the reach of my skills set.
I then had a quick search on the internet for plans and studied other Lumberjock-made dulcitars such as rdwile's blogpost (which includes a great video about tuning the instrument).
Dulcitars are pretty simple to make and frankly, building one or several does constitute much difference in time investment. That is why, talking about dulcitars to some guitar playing friends who had never heard of them, I decided to make a total of 4 and give away the extra 3 instruments.
When I say that dulcitars are simple to make… it is more or less true if you follow these plans (plans link at the bottom of the page) and if you have access to a bandsaw. I do not own a bandsaw, so several operations turned out to be slightly more involved and time consuming.
Picture 1: the four finished dulcitars
Picture 2: ripping the walnut for the dulcitar bodies
Picture 3: gluing the soundboards (fir) and the back boards (ash)
Picture 4: inserting the fret wire in the proper location
Picture 5: instruments top and bottom details
Picture 6: I have access to a small cnc mill at work with which I got a small billet of brass milled to a design to be used as my mark. A quick heating over the kitchen stove turned this brass pattern into a nice woodburning tool.
What about my son ? He got his dulcitar today and appears to have found it to his liking :
Until next time,
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