"The only picture of Dad playing a dulcimer"

This Dulce was made by his Dad and is the same one I used to record "The Bells Of St Mary's", the first track of my CD ("The Beautiful Dulcimer"). After Dad & Mom sadly passed on, this old dulcimer was found in the coal house by my brother Syd. This meant that we now had two dulcimers, this old one, now approaching 100 years old, and one that Dad, with Syd's help, had made for me.
Being the youngest of twelve children I was Dad's last hope of carrying on the family tradition of playing the hammered dulcimer. Ivy the eldest of us did play a little, but after marrying and bringing up a family, did not continue.
After retrieving the old Dulce it obviously needed renovating before it could be played, so Syd and I eventually set about restoring it.

"The dulce  after restoration"

During the restoration I took photo's of it at varying stages to keep a record of the excellent  workmanship and the way it had been made.  I was going to attempt to make a dulcimer myself eventually. It was quite a big decision to strip it down and clean it, and do a couple of minor repairs despite being advised not to by a new acquaintance, an American named Michael Greiner, who thought it should have been left in it's original state. But I wanted to play it again, Sam ????

"Inside view of my grandad's dulce"

In this view I wanted to capture the construction, positioning, and dimensions of the tuning peg block. The thickness of which, amazingly, is only 1?" (28mm). This resulted in the sound box extending under both blocks. I'm sure this was a significant factor as to the volume this one and the other old dulcimers produced. Also noticeable is the way in which the peg blocks are seated in a slot let into the top and bottom outer rails.

"Top and bottom rails"

This picture shows the top and bottom rails, the two strengthening inner bars, with the small square filler blocks attached & the positioning of the 6 support posts. The space for the sound board from top to bottom was 8¾" (222mm). This rather small dimension housed  12 treble courses, (4 strings per course), and 12 bass courses (3 strings per course). The rather small playing area made them more suitable for plucking, but small hammers were made and very often used.

"My first dulcimer"

The first dulcimer I actually owned was made for me by my Dad with the assistance of one of my brothers Syd. It was at a time when all the materials needed to make a dulcimer, or any musical instrument, were in very short supply. It was therefore a case of beg, steal or borrow all the raw materials. The wood became the main problem, but with perseverance they managed to gather enough from family and friends to start. The largest piece of wood needed was of course for the base, finally they had to compromise and glue 2 pieces together. The soundboard is plywood, which started life as the back of a family wardrobe. No wonder our clothes always felt damp. The tuning pegs

were made from arc-welding electrodes stripped of the flux coating, hand drilled with a 1/16th drill and cut to length. A Birmingham screw driver (an 'ammer) was used to shape the end, and a key made to fit the flattened ends. The retaining pins were produced using 1/8th gas welding electrodes, or as an alternative 1/8th diameter nails. Most of the Birmingham dulcimers were made with continuous bridges and the holes in this one were pushed in with a red hot poker. This task was performed in the back garden, as the smoke and smell filled the air the neighbours could be heard saying "It looks and smells like Albert Woodley is making another  dulcimer".

"My first attempt at making one....."

I made this dulcimer trying to copy the techniques used by  my grandfather and father, the main features being that the front and back rails  were set at completely different angles, inside there were two strengthening cross members that were shaped to fit under the peg blocks and seemed to be suspended, touching neither the base or the soundboard. In addition, in line with both bridges were small blocks for support, these little blocks can be seen quite clearly in the picture above. In between the cross members six posts were also used to support the bridges. I made the sound board in two pieces, which may be taken out without disturbing the strings, so that I could experiment putting contact microphones inside, also adding things to try to change the sound. It eventually finished up being one of my octave dulcimers. There are two tracks of this Octave dulcimer on the

double cassette tape produced by Veteran Tapes called "DULCIMER PLAYERS FROM ENGLAND  -  'I Thought I Was The Only One' ". This double cassette package is well worth the purchase, it features some rare old recordings of some of the finest players of yester-year, including both hammerers and "PLUCKERS".