COMING OF AGE!

[Dick Glasgow]

Well it finally happened!

I couldn't put it off any longer!

I now feel like I've, at last, got my Boy Scout Hammered Dulcimer Badge! ;D

You see, yesterday I restrung a 16/15 Dulcimer!

Well, over in the How-to articles at ED, Ardie did warn me that I'd need a little patience & TWELVE HOURS later, it had all gone!

I didn't have his recommended (Looping Machine) so I'd been stabbed so many times by wire ends that my finger ends felt like pin cushions!

By the end of it, there was so many blood stains around me that I thought I might need to phone for a transfusion!

I'd used up every conceivable naughty word in my Dictionary & then invented a few more besides!

In fact, for most of the time, I just couldn't get this image out of my mind: Death of a Dulcimer

But I finally got it done & boysadear did it feel good to get the job done & put it behind me.

But I certainly hope it's many a long year before I need to put myself through that kind of abject torture again.

I fact, the next time, I think I'll simply throw the old Dulcimer in the nearest SKIP & go buy a new one!

Cheers
Dick

[Nikita]

;D come on, dick, just 12 hours... I'd need that just to take the old strings off just imagine : 144 strings...
and Cloud Nine must have met the kind of B...kes you can mett at session, when you arrive with a HD horrific picture, that !

[gypsy]

I tell people that the dulcimer gods demand blood sacrifice when restringing. Which is why i only REPLACE broken strings, have only done an entire dulcimer when the beastie needed end pins. (came with SLOT headed screws, but that is another story!) Next time: you need a couple of videos, and directional aids to mellow your frame of mind. I use round nosed pliers to make my strings, a friendly piano tuner taught me how, as well as selling me the harpsichord wire (WHOLESALE! plus 10%) to make the strings. Next time will be easier, really it will.

[Dick Glasgow]

NEXT TIME?

[ceadach]

Dick, I can empathize. I restring my santoor a couple months ago. I'm looking at having to string my new dulcimer (16-16) upon completion and my old one is way overdue for an overhaul, with new strings and new bridges.

I've made a couple looping machines, and they are actually easy to make with a couple of common tools. I think I used was a couple blocks of wood, a drill, some fairly heavy wire and probably a vise or cramp and pliers of some kind to help bend the winding hook. I should find my old one. Perhaps this subject should be my next missive in "Making Dulcimers"!

As to the burning dulcimer from the Cloud Nine site...I confess to actually loving the image!!! ;D Hence I made an avatar picture out of it. Think of it in biblical terms...Perhaps this explains the biblical "dulcimer" references!!!!

[jt3d]

Heh-heh-heheh...now I know who to send my HD to if it ever needs restringing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Nikita]

In switzerland, we have a little tool so practical for strings changing : it's a small screwdriver, with a notch in the middle of the - pardon my french - screwing end. I use it to pluck the strings for tuning, and to give the new string the loop at one end and the angle at the other end, to make it hold fastly around the tuning pin. Might be useful with HD too...

[gypsy]

Couldja post a picture? Sounds pretty neat. O'course, i have used my round nosed pliers for years, so it goes pretty fast. And yes, Dick, it WILL happen again. You will break a string (or five, or six) or buy that really cool neglected dulcimer with totally rusted out strings......or dare i say it.......one like my beach dulcimer that came with slot headed screws instead of hitch pins. The head of the screw would cut the string on the top courses anytime you tried to tune. ARG!