Not a plane, but a really fun project. I have a young man in our church that plays a mountain dulcimer and is teaching a few of the kids to play. He will be leaving in a couple of months to go to grad school and wanted to make something as a gift to the kids. After trying in vain to order some dulcimers online (and the fact that they are $800+), he asked if I could help make some. I jumped at the chance because the kids are really great and also thought it would be a great learning experience. Had a bunch of walnut laying around so we chopped it up and had a buddy sand the pieces down to the 1/8" thickness we needed.
There are traditionally two main dulcimer shapes: the hourglass and the teardrop shown here. We originally wanted to do the hourglass design but I had a bear of a time bending the sides to shape without splitting. In all, we made 5 of them. The first prototype went to my wife who also wants to learn to play. It was also the one we made all the mistakes on lol. My friend wanted to personalize each instrument for the child to make it more special, so we made each one with a different sound hole design. The F note is actually for our minister of music. The bass is for the oldest boy who loves fishing. His sister loves horses, and his little brother is a huge lizard fanatic lol.
For someone who knew nothing about building instruments, they came out pretty good, and sound great. I'm sure a professionally built one would be much nicer, but for a learning instrument, they will do fine, and the recipients were very happy. Still have one more to build for my friend's mother.
