Bindings
I am using an American made Bending iron that I have had for 10 years and normally use for all my side bending. If you wanted to use the Low tech method with boiling water you would need to do the bindings in 4 pieces. I wanted to save time and glue up straight away rather than wait another week!
Binding material
I have used Walnut here in this example but you can purchase material from luthiery supplies that does not require bending like plastic or the black and white fibre that is used by companies like Taylor guitars.

Routing

Trimming can be done with a sharp knife and sand paper and left with the top and back flush with no powertools used,  As I wanted to bind this one I have used the routing table so that you can see the next step. I will be keeping it simple though, The last one I did of these had purflings as well, which is a lot of extra work on such a small instrument and looks a little over busy to me.



WARNING Loud machine noise please watch the volume levels!!!

The instrument is coming along nicely now, its amazing how it can go from looking quite rough and unformed to having a charactor of its own, it feels like one of my stick dulcimers already.

equipment note: My router table is a very basic cheap one purchased from ebay , the router an old Red Devil 1/4" /6mm 550 watt model. If you were buying a router an 850watt or higher would be recommended(the higher the better) I am happy with this for these small routing jobs though.

The stepped router bits are available as sets from stewmac in the states, though for this one I mixed and matched a set of router bits to get the bearing guide size I needed.

Assembly
I have split the gluing up into separate stages, the body mold does allow for doing it in one go but for clarity and the best chances of sucess I have filmed the neck, top and back  gluing independently.

The Back
Before we go ahead and assemble the instrument we just need to put together the back of the instrument. I have chosen to bookmatch a piece of cherry to match the ribs.

One note about the sellotape method during glue up, I inverted the process normally used because the wood was shaped, Ideally the wood would be square and the tape is applied on the topwith the wood held in a "V" shape and sprung down, This is very effective when the wood is acurately planed/sanded. I did need to crampe the small end of the back a little which I couldnt clearly show.

The brace I used is fractionally curved along its base, this helps the instrument stay flat after assembly, though with such a narrow size the effect may be negligible anyhow. I chose australian Camphor wood for the brace, just for the smell, it repells moths too though!!

There are videos on Youtube showing how to make and use shooting boards as well as edge jointing, I tried to keep things simple in this video, though I have done this many times before its easy for me to skip ahead, so please let me know if there is anything I need to clarify.

The Fingerboard
You can use many different kind of hardwoods for the fingerboard,  Look out for material from turning suppliers sold as turning blanks(these may not be fully seasoned though!  Rosewood, hard maple, ebony all standard choices.




NB: The Fret press tool was purchased from Stewmac in the States, the low tech alternative was just a pin hammer!!(frettting hammers are available also from the same supplier)

The Neck
This is the "stick" part of the instrument and is the part your hands will be in contact with as you play, its also very personal in the way you shape it and crucial to get as accurate as you can.



The plans show a dovetail join and allude to the one piece neck/block) so I have focused on making that clearer in the video. The dovetail method is more tricky and I stopped using it about 3 years ago in favour of this method shown.

re:Neck Angle,  this is something that video 5.4 looks into but what we are trying to do is tilt the neck back a few degrees so that the bridge can be a little higher,  this has an effect of giving a little more volume when strummed,  My hesitation though is that it is fiddly and you may prefer to make the neck straight as do most Stick Dulcimer builders!!  

Please note that I have had to work with no dust extraction on in order to film, plus I have had to remove clamps to get a clear shot as well as raise the bandsaw blade higher. I also don't recommend working with a camera between you and your work!! It takes 10 times longer!

The Soundboard
I like to use quartersawn spruce for the soundboards(guitar tonewood will make many),  Mahogany or another light hardwood can also be used but it will need to be thinner, just under 2mm.

In this video I use Forstner bits and a bench drill to acurately make the recess for the inlay, please note you cannot do this if you don't have a bench drill( the bench drill is the main power tool for this instrument - I use it to do the rosette, thickness the sides, and install frets too)  The inner diameter is 28mm but in the video I refer to a 32mm size for the rosette,  in actual fact I ended up using a 35mm one as the purfling I used added up to 3.5mm wide,  you can use wood veneers to match the size of bits you have or you can purchase forstner bits to fit the size of purfling!






I normally use an mdf board the same shape as the soundboard to do the gluing up of the braces, I couldn't find it today so It meant I had to use my long reach clamps!! improvising is part of the making process...

You can taper the ends of the struts after gluing. but with the softwood soundboard at around 2mm I go for the safer option.