Different approach to wooden pegs

I don't know how much call others have for making dulcimers with wooden pegs. I know it bugged me to try to tune with them--a tiny movement made such a difference in pitch, and then if you crammed the peg in tight enough to hold that tension, it could be pretty stuck in the peg-head later.

So I used mechanical tuners, which seemed vastly more practical, but didn't look [to my eye] as simple or folksy as the rest of the instrument.

Toward the end of my earlier "production run", I started making pegs differently.

[1] I cut pieces of maple dowel to length, and clamped them to my drill press table, vertically....... then bored a 1/8" hole down the center of the dowel....... took a hardened aluminum siding nail [I think they were about 3" long], and roughened the shank of the nail with a file......... smeared it with epoxy, and put some epoxy down in the dowel with a toothpick....... and slid the nail down into the dowel.

[2] While the epoxy set up, I cut discs of hardwood that matched the side & back wood of whatever dulcimer I was working on, about 3/4" diameter by 1/2 thick.

[3] I tapered the non-nailed end of the dowel, and bored and tapered a hole through the discs, and then glued the disc to the end of the dowel.

[4] Then trimmed off the head of the nail, filed the nail flush with the end of the peg, and tapered the shank of the peg with one of those pencil-sharpener-style peg tools.

[5] Then chucked the semi-finished peg in the drill press, and used a rat-tail file to cut a groove about half-way up the shank, and down to where the nail just started showing.

[6] Then drilled a tiny hole in the nail, just big enough to pass the biggest string being used...... and then used a sanding drum to scallop the disc/head of the peg.

Hopefully, if my pics load, that will all make sense. What I ended up with was a fairly hefty peg, so it would grip the peg-head securely without being super-tight........ and with a very small-diameter cross-section where the string wound, so that a modest turn of the peg didn't stretch the string so dramatically. Easier to tune, and less likely to get stuck. Still fussier than using mechanical tuners, of course, and not purely "traditional", but felt like a good compromise to me. [and the peg-head didn't seam heavy, by comparison to the body of the instrument]

Before too long, I hope to retire and get back to making dulcimers. If this peg approach seems misguided, I'd appreciate input from you folks.

Sincerely,

Gary