Questions: Hammered Dulcimer

by John Calkin

Originally published in American Lutherie #81, 2005 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015



Gerald E. King from Conifer, Colorado asks:

I am gathering material to construct a hammered dulcimer using GAL Instrument Plan #39. According to the plan’s creators Suran and Robison, the soundboard should be 1/4" thick, quartersawn mahogany. I have contacted several suppliers with no luck. Is this an unusually thick soundboard requirement? Is it an error in the plans?


John Calkin from Greenville, Virginia replies:

Hammered dulcimers have lots of string tension that would like to fold the instrument in half. A top as thick as 1/4" is necessary to help take the strain. Just about all my dulcimers had the top glued to the frame, and any weakness in the bracing of the top (or anywhere else) often led to distortions of the top that were seldom lethal but always ugly. There’s a construction method that uses a floating top of thinner material, but it has many more internal braces and is much more complicated to build. I’ve never made one. There’s so much tension on a dulcimer that even a thick top rings like a bell.