Dulcitars fill in time when I get bored with turning.

One of the things I know about myself is that I can only do a redundant task for so long before needing a change. Turning chair spindles is one of those tasks,and while I am very pleased with my progress to date I need a couple of other projects to distract me from the mind-numbing hours of spindle turning.

The first of these projects is building a few strumsticks. I got a plan from Woodnet by Bill Wells which is a very simple project. Plans here.

I hve not built any instruments in a bit, so it gaves me a chance to re-acquaint my self with this craft. Not a lot of writing, let the pictures tell the story.

Squaring and cleaning up the body of the instrument from nice quartersawn maple.
 Nice Sauer & Steiner Panel Plane!

Four bodies with sides cut ready for insertion of end block. Very interesting construction with sliced sides opened up forming the body of the instrumnt.

End blocks inserted inserted into bodies and glued up. Neat how the sides are opened up to form the body.

A few cocobolo headstock overlays I had glued up,
 which will make a nice instrument back.

Some offcuts from guitar backs can be re-glued into bookmatched backs
 for the instruments, lets me use some stuff that has been sitting around for a long time.
Theese are koa, elm and walnut.

Smoothing the edges for the back and top with the Auriou rasp - a nice tool.

Completed instrument with rosewood fingerboard,
again used from sone old stock that has been sitting around for years.

Closeup of top showing a mini version of my logo.
These are cool!

Back to spindles. Next step for the instruments is to drill out the holes for tuning machines, fret the fingerboard and get it ready for finish - stay tuned, I will get bored again soon - this I know to be true.