Thanks for the input everyone, greatly appreciated!!

The dulcimer is beautiful, I hope the sound is also wonderful and you have many years enjoying it.

Most good violin fine tuners pull the end of the ball string to tighten/loosen it slightly.  However, these are 'inline' cheaper removable fine tuners.  Fine tuners of this type (which I have used on several various instruments at one time or another, as a last resort) will eventually create a weak spot in the string since they depend on their screw forcing a bend in the string to pull it tighter.  

If you find them useful then by all means keep them.  You'll need to figure out how they hook onto the string in a threading sort of way when you have to change a broken string.  Sometimes it's tricky to hook the string.  They are hooked only to the string, so they can also go flying when the string breaks and you might lose them on the grass that way. 

If you find the wooden tuners work great for you, then my personal advice would be to take these little contraptions off as the strings get replaced.  I have always found them to be way more trouble than they're worth.  That said, I think better violin fine tuners are great, but then you need a type of tailpiece they can be attached to, like here .

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Those irritated by grain of sand best avoid beach.
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  Lucky you! It's beautiful. 

The fine tuners were a great accessory to the wooden tuners for many folks. The wooden tuners still need to be conditioned, but the fine tuners will be used to make final adjustment. The fine tuners are the old Suzuki standard. They work by "pinching" the string to tighten the tension in turn raising the pitch of the string. To tune the instrument loosen the fine tuners, tune the string to just flat of pitch with the wooden tuners, then tighten the fine tuner to bring the string into pitch. Hope this helps,

DAN

www.dulcimore.com

I just got lucky enough to come into a Homer Ledford YP-1900, in great shape, but a first for me, is the violin fine tuners, have numerous other dulcimers but never have had these tuners on any of them.

 So, simply put, how do they work, just looking for any suggestion on how to use them, I am simply tuning it now with the wooden pegs which are very tight on this dulcimer, and can get a very close, accurate tuning, but was curious how to refine it using the fine tuners.

 Thanks, as always, in advance.