I've been glad to have some time to just let the timbers dry out more, now that I have begun to understand just how important moisture content is in wood: the 2x4s were clearly quite loaded with water when I bought them, as softwood lumber typically is, here in the Northwest. Once I realized that the issue is to prevent the lumber from drying too quickly, I wrapped the ends of the beams, already cut to their final angles, with plastic wrap. After my travel, inspection of the wood shows no signs of excessive checking or splitting on the ends; and the lumber is now noticeably lighter and drier. In the future, I won't cut the lumber until I'm convinced it is dry enough to use. This includes the side-panels of the pandalon, i.e., the visible parts, made from 1x6 softwood planks, which I haven't cut yet; the 2x4s will be covered up in this design, so as long as they are structurally sound, all will be well.
Cutting the 1x6s at the necessary various beveled angles, will be an interesting challenge... The chopsaw which I used to cut the 2x4s, won't work here, lumber is too wide for it. Unless, perhaps, there are other modes in which it can be operated, which would seem sensible to me; it appears that the chopsaw is almost exclusively intended for cutting 2x4s, specifically, across the grain, but this is a consequence of the constraints imposed by the design of its table and guides. It could easily be adapted to other roles, but it seems this flexibility has not been provided. So, I'm looking at constructing a special jig, akin to a mitre-box, which will let me clamp the lumber at a specific angle and then make a straight cut through it with a handsaw.
One little detail: before I left, I did the first carving-out of the structural timber, thus verifying that I have a way to do this. I started the cuts with the jigsaw, then completed with my new little hand saw. This first cut is to free the soundboard over the beam, so the exact profile of the cut is not critical. The next cuts I make, however, will be to inset the wrestplank into the side beams, so it will be important to have accurate, flat surfaces.
I have done quite a bit of drawing and designing in my notebook, while away on travel. I've refined my design for the mutation stops (handstops and pedals). I was originally planning to use a simplified arrangement, but now I've decided to implement a version of the same "featureful" stop mechanism which I plan to use on the harpsichord. This is because, as I listen to more and more hammered dulcimer music, I come to realize the importance of the mutation stops (and the importance of having pedal control over them).
So in my "featureful" design, there are either two or three pedals. The right pedal, number 3, always operates the damper-lift function, just as on pianos. Pedal 1 and pedal 2 operate "machine stops", which can each move multiple stop knobs simultaneously. For simpler versions, pedal 2 (the middle one) can be eliminated, leaving pedal 1 (machine stop) and pedal 3 (damper-lift).
On the pandalon, which is basically a flat instrument which can lay upon a tabletop, the pedals will be housed in a separate floor unit, connected with bicycle brake cables. A quick-disconnect arrangement at the instrument end allows the floor unit and its cables to be easily detached. All stops (including the damper-lift function) can be operated by the handstops on the front panel, even if the pedals are not connected.
The handstops have handles which can rotate; when the handle is horizontal, the stop is "free", able to be moved by hand. When the handle is turned to point upwards, the stop is engaged with pedal 1; downwards engages pedal 2 (if provided). Stop knobs which are engaged with a given pedal, track its motion linearly; thus, the pedal can be used to gradually apply effects which have a variable intensity, such as the buff stop. This is akin to the pedal-operated pull-down dampers on some hammered dulcimers. There is no way to make a stop track a pedal "inversely", i.e., on by default, turned off when pedal is pressed. And there is no way to "share" a stop between the two machine-stop pedals: if it's engaged with one pedal, it can't also be engaged with the other. There are ways I can imagine to complicate the handle mechanism, to provide this flexibility, but I am not sure it would be worth it. I'll probably build the pandalon without such complications, and possibly only with the two-pedal system rather than three, and then I'll see what features and capabilities I seem to miss, under actual playing conditions. The pedals are not really intended to imitate the preset system on an organ; rather, the intent is to provide a way to control, typically, just one stop at a time with linear pedal control.
