One Saturday night in the winter of 1976-1977, Amy Tipton took me to Carter's Store near Mendota, Virginia. We sat on hard benches, were kept warm by both a wood stove and by the astonishing number of people crammed inside. Gusts of snow blew in every time someone opened the door. Among the first performers we heard at Carter's Store, if not the very first, was John McCutcheon. I'd never heard or heard of a hammered dulcimer until then, and after that it was hard to hear enough. We eventually saw Trapezoid (Sam Rizetta's dulcimer band) at Carter's Store, too. We took George Kelley, Jr., and Don and Carolyn Hurless there. When Don and Carolyn, professional musicians from Ohio, heard John McCutcheon perform, Don begged a closer look at John's instrument. Don tried to play a scale, discovered the ingenious tuning pattern, then went home and built one for himself. Don's hobbies include building harpsichords, clavicords and virginals, so tossing off a hammered dulcimer was not especially challenging.

 

Summer 2006.

Amy Tipton Cortner spent a week at the Swannanoa Gathering in Black Mountain, North Carolina, learning to play her great grand-dad's fiddle, dancing, and singing shape-note hymns. After she came home, she kept up her dancing and fiddle practice. She keeps apologizing for the "noise" but I take this as inspiration: if my wife can work her way through the considerable difficulties of the fiddle, its unfretted notes and the mysteries of the bow, then who exactly am I to be too self-conscious to learn to play something myself?

I don't know why or when the idea of playing a dulcimer came back to me. I thought it would be perfect for the shape-note tunes Amy and I had been encountering for a couple of years. I knew it would be much simpler and more quickly gratifying than Amy's fiddling. I remembered Don bringing his dulcimer down to southwest Virginia once and showing George and me how to get around on it.

August 23. I again planned to meet Don at George's farm, so I asked if he would mind bringing the instrument with him and reintroducing us. With Don's coaching, I played scales. Arpegios. Accepted tips about efficient movement, exercises, drills. And left knowing what to look for in my own instrument. I fully intended to buy one from Jerry Reed Smith's shop, Song of the Wood, in Black Mountain. I kept shooting details of Don's dulcimer trying to catch the light on its strings just so, trying to show a little of its elegant and intricate geometries, trying to show off the Grandma Moses-like drawing of George's farm gracing its soundboard. Don said something about my shooting enough photos that I could probably build one myself. Not what I had in mind, I said.

But the remark stuck with me on the drive home.

August 25. I bought Ardie Davis's book on building hammered dulcimers. Made up a parts list. A tool list. Realized that for what I would pay for a 12/11 beginner's instrument, I could have the satisfaction of making one with more range. I downloaded RD's ebook.

August 27. I infer that I must actually mean to do this, because today I ordered hard maple for the pin blocks and black cherry for the rails. (Arrived 8/30.)

August 28. Ordered mahogany plywood in manageable 24x48" sheets from a small mill out in Missouri. Since it's just about as cheap and much easier to order two pieces at once as it is to drive all over and otherwise suffer for savings, I opted to make the back of the instrument from the same wood. Also lets me mess up without being left without a soundboard if I have to rebuild the back using a piece of more ordinary plywood. (Got a note demanding additional shipping charges a few days after using the mill's online order form; not good practice, boys. But I was determined not to let it bug me.)

August 30. Ordered Ardie's recommended glue, Resorcinol adhesive, from McClendon's Hardware, in Renton, WA. (No hurry for it, selected parcel post – I don't think you can ship this stuff by air anyway. Won't need it till I get laminated pin block caps from Ardie and some clamps from Lowe's anyway.)

 

The Naming of Parts...

Pin blocks: These hold the tuning and hitch pins which hold the strings. They bear the tension of the strings -- about three tons worth -- and could comprise the instrument's left and right sides in the absence of the cosmetic and protective rails that complete the trapezoidal frame. Use hard maple for pin block bodies and cap them with laminated maple to prevent splitting.

Rails: Walnut is traditional, but I got a good deal on black cherry. Rails frame the instrument, top, bottom, and sides. Click here for my source of hardwoods. Actually, I thought I'd like cocobolo for an exotic framing material, but it's awfully expensive and not even remotely native to the instrument. Save it for number two or maybe as a tweak for later.

Bridges: Maple is recommended. Use a cherry inlay to mark the foundation notes of scales? Reverse that? Use brass caps following Don's example rather than Delrin as shown in the book. Maybe bright and dark brass instead of inlaid wood? The metal bridge caps will produce a brighter tone and more sustain, nice for building chords and shape-note pieces, I think. But maybe too much? See "dampers" below.

Side bridges: if you follow the book drill these out of maple or cherry (and make room for one additional string per course), or use a brass rod here, too (per Don's instrument).

Soundboard: baltic birch? Red cedar? What can I find? (Found Mahogany plywood, see 8/28.)

Internal braces: hardwood dowels

Hitch pins. Leave room for an additional string per course.

Tuning pins. Use "zither pins" and leave room on the blocks for an additional string per course, just in case.

Strings. Follow Ardie's recipe for rich tone and slightly reduced sustain, especially if you use brass bridge caps.

Dampers. Be thinking of knee-controlled damping mechanisms for both treble and bass bridges; setable to be damped or undamped by default. This will be important if I err on the side of a too-bright instrument with too much sustain, as seems likely. Think of Patrick's mini-lecture on pedal steel controls. Also consider that it's easier to add damping than to increase sustain if the native sound is too dead. So err accordingly.

You'll also need a case, some form of stand, hammers, other hammers, routing bit for the Dremel tool, and a tuning wrench. Also glue, clamps, a plywood saw blade (for jig saw), and stain.

 

 

 

Composer, musician, instrument-maker and music teacher Don Hurless. At top note use of simple screws in place of hitch pins and cheat sheets covering a drawing of George's farm on the soundboard.

 

 

Don with a photo of John McCutcheon circa our discovery of hammered dulcimers
(and John McCutcheon).

The book is Peter Pickow's, Hammered Dulcimer,
which offers this encouraging riff under Don's thumb:

"Don't be discouraged by the seeming complexity of these 'advanced' arrangements; they are advanced but none of them is really difficult. To be totally frank... there is a distinctly limited number of notes available on any hammered dulcimer. With your two hammers, you have the means to sound any two tones simultaneously or one after the other... [T]his is the sum total of your options. Now look at your dulcimer. Are there any two notes that are difficult to sound, together or in succession? (The answer is "no.") It's just a matter of moving along and getting to where you are going in the time that you have to get there."

Makes me think of a Hobbitt somehow.

 

 

George picking out chords on Don's dulcimer using one hammer and one Bic pen, a convenient if not entirely elegant instrumental combination.

 

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Building: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Refinements, etc: 16 17 18 19