If you're going to sand the pegs, use a VERY fine sandpaper -- 800 or 1000 grit. A TINY change in diameter makes a huge difference.
Better yet, take the pegs and dulcimer to a violin shop and ask them to correct the peg fit.
What a wonderful idea, Ariane! Mark & I look forward to participating. <3
PS- Some of the very best tunes are the simple ones. I'm not a "technical" player so simple tunes work well for me.
Hi tpatts,
Thank you very much for your interest.
Since Thursday (when I have posted it in the dulcimer facebook groups) 15 musicians have informed me that they will take part - from 4 of them I have already received the links.
There is no skill level required - it just should sound "good" (if simple or complicated) so that everybody who opens this calendar little door will enjoy it.
You know that even a simple melody can bring a smile on to one's face.
If there are more than 24 recordings - I could either make a second calendar or perhaps a kind of "between the years" calendar for the days from Christmas until New Year for example...
Sounds like a wonderful idea!
Is there a required skill level for players to be at? I’ve only been playing less than a year?
What happens if/when there are more recordings than days in advent?
The only problem I see with the ukulele tuners or banjo tuners is that the peg head wall is rather thin. I think you will need to use a shim of some sort to be able to affix the tuners properly.]
Ken
"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."
Just wondering could you use wooden frets such as are used on some humle's........June Apple dulcimers has some pics of European zithers that use them and I suspect they are glued.........half the fret board for most of them if I remember correctly.
Another option is to get some Banjo tuners. I did put on some ukulele tuners on a small dulcimer and it looks good on that one....but your dulcimer here looks pretty big and to balance out the size of things, you might consider banjo tuners that are pictured in the above photo as you open this site. I just finished dulcimer #29 today and these are what I used. I like them very much. If you get them straight from China...cheap...and you don't know what you're getting. If you get them from a music store, if they don't work like you want them to...can take 'em back. I ordered them from a place in Kentucky...got 'em in 4 days. happy about that. $59.00. yep, you'd have to enlarge the holes. Where is this dulcimer made? aloha, irene
Aloha Irene! Thanks for the encouragement!
I'm still considering whether or not to set any frets in there. If I can get it play without, I'll just leave her fretless! ;)
Hm. A (thin) removable fretboard could be interesting; as could tied frets.
We shall see!
I was wondering that too Irene. Fretting a fretboard that is already installed is a major problem. Even if you use staple frets, all that hammering can do a LOT of damage...
No reason they won't work. You may have to enlarge the holes a bit -- it depends on the diameter of the shaft relative to the diameter of the hole. Check the specs on those Grover 8Ns for shaft size.
A few minutes work would have made those wooden tuners work just right...
this is coming along GREAT.....congratulations. you've not put the frets on the fretboard yet? hummmmmmm. Will you put frets on another piece of wood THEN put that part on the dulcimer with glue? ahhhhhhh, there are soooooooooooo many ways to make a dulcimer. A JOY FOR SURE. aloha, irene
The break looks pretty clean to me, judging from the picture. Since 80% of the wood is still integral with that big block thing, I'd be hesitant to cut off the remaining wood.
If it were mine, I'd just "freshen up the edges" of the fracture, fashion a bit of wood to fit, and stain it a nice contrasting colour! If it's an old instrument, dings and dents and cracks and repairs are just part of her life story.
As far as wood putty goes, I've had good luck using it to (functionally) restore a broken old oboe. One of the ancient block-pivot kinds. One of the blocks that held the key in place had been broken off. A glob of putty, a good bit of sanding and some dark stain at least allow the instrument to function properly, and from a distance the repair isn't terribly apparent.
Well, the dulcimer project is coming along nicely (I think)!
Bridge, nut, endplates, spacer, end pin and clip have all been fashioned and installed.
Am still playing around with fretted v. fretless.
An overall view of the front end:
Nut:
Closeup of the front end, showing a slight bowing up of the nose when strung up. Right now it's tuned CGc. The extra hitch pins and the fiddle end pin are intended to secure a wire clip that will clamp the floating bridge down when not in use, thus (hopefully) relieving tension stress on the sound board:
A view down into the body from the scheitholt arcade. As you can see, the fingerboard is hollow (hence the "scheitholt on a soundbox" description); and the sound board itself is wide open the whole length of the sound box, under the arcade:
I know John C. Knopf noted that Howie Mitchell's design has been discredited, but I'd beg to differ. While I don't know what the original concept for the design was supposed to be, I do know, with the nose pointing up that way you do get a nice bebung by pressing on the bridge! That's a pretty cool feature.
Personally, I think this instrument sounds lovely, nice and resonant. Though I'm still considering fretted v. fretless, I fear I made the bridge and nut too low --- anything but an open string sounds muddled. :/ I'm going to try raising up those two bits to see if I can get a clearer tone on the fingerboard.
Will Grover 8N geared Ukulele tuners work alright on a Dulcimer, before I go ahead and order any? I want to put them on that dulcimer I just bought, it has these infernal violin tuning pegs that are all seized, probably because they don't fit properly, they aren't ebony, and it's been really humid. Got 2 out of 3 out, but it took several days and a lot of patience with what I have to work with...
*** NEW International PROJECT ***
for a
MUSICAL Advent calendar
============================
So we need musicians who would like to fill this Advent calendar with own recordings of favorite Advent tunes preferably played on mountain or hammered dulcimer (other instruments are also welcome).
I will collect the links of your youtube video or soundcloud audio (it seems that I can only fill in links to the online calendar - no mp3) in the coming weeks (October and November) and create this Advent calendar and post it if possible here in the forum and in the dulcimer facebook groups for others and our joy.
I am very excited to see how you like this idea.
I have posted this idea in the dulcimer facebook groups yesterday - already 9 musicians answered and would like to participate.
Who else would like to join in?
Best wishes
Ariane
I just got off the phone with Jim Woods at McSpadden. One of our dulcimer friends has an old McSpadden -- 1967 vintage; and was told by Lynn McSpadden not to put anything else on there. Well, 50 years later, that dulcimer is just a bit dusty and in need of refreshing!!
Jim told me that "back in the day" they used "furniture wax" -- carnuba wax, that is -- on those dulcimers. So if you've got an oldie McSpad that needs a facelife, hunt up some carnuba wax and get polishing!
Kendra has so much musical history to share and is quite talented. I enjoyed the article, thank you.
Sounds delicious and comforting. Your words remind me of that Greg Brown tune "Canned Goods" .
Let the wild winter wind bellow and blow
I'm as warm as a July tomato.
There's peaches on the shelf, potatoes in the bin
Supper ready everybody come on in
Taste a little of the summer
Taste a little of the summer
Taste a little of the summer
Grandma put it all in jars.
I buckled down and made a BIG batch of green tomatillo sauce today, and canned it. Always a project to haul out the canning stuff.
I started with approx. 14 lbs of tomatillos (before husking), and finished up with about 16 nice looking pint jars. It also included 4 onions, 13 cloves garlic, 2 fresh garden red peppers, an entire large bunch of fresh cilantro, 1.5 cups lime juice, and 2 T. ground cumin. About 1 tablespoon each of ground black pepper, salt, and red pepper flakes.
My oh my but it tastes divine!
So satisfying to get the messy kitchen all cleaned up and hear the 'pinggg!' sound as each jar top dimple seals down while cooling. 
When the snow flies outside, every time we open a jar it'll bring back the taste of Summer.
@butch-ross, you're just gonna have to change the lyrics. "Old enough to retire but I'm still a waiter/'Cause I like singing folk songs."
By the way, I hear Juneau's paying $50 now.
Honestly, it's a great tune, Butch. You gotta find a way to keep it alive.
strothers.com has a string gauge calculator that's really useful. I like heavier strings, so I usually add 2 to whatever it gives me (so if it's .010 then I go .012). But regardless, it's a really good starting point for any VSL or even any tuning.
http://www.strothers.com/string_choice.html
I used to play This Song all the time, but I stopped 'cuz I'm so clearly not even close to 35 anymore.
Thanks, Ken......that is a great reminder........your website is outstanding, in fact I have used some of those recipes in days gone by. I looked for a food-coop sort of group out here but alas none. (You can find plenty of dope co-ops though.) When I was able to deliver food to the pantries around here I could always manage to find some produce from time to time. Those sources have dried up for the most part.
And you are so right about those megastore groceries, one day apples were $4.29 a pound. (A young women ahead of me in the checkout line had a bag of apples for the two tykes she had with her, 6-7 apples rang up a bit over $11.00.) Next year I will fence off an area and grow my own, or at least some off it. I'll bet have the poor folk out here are sick with diabetes, bad teeth, and all sorts of other stuff, because they just cannot afford to eat healthy food.
I'll hit your website today and come up with a list of things to buy when I head down to Ocala. There is a Earthfare store there, pricey but the produce is pretty good.
I appreciate the reminder to visit your website and will make it so.
Saltsprings! Look around and see if there's a Produce Co-op in your area. We get 98% of our veggies these days from the SWFL Produce Co-op. Great quality veg and MUCH cheaper than Publix! We're both Pescatarians (fish/seafood once/twice a week) and eat a LOT of veggies. I spend $30-40 at the co-op for what would cost me twice that from Public or any of the megamarts.
Check out my weekly Fooding Around With The Kilted Cook food-blog. I have hundreds...thousands of great, easy to prepare vegetarian and other recipes that I've posted over the past five years. Just yesterday, among other things, I posted a recipe for Mexican-flavored white bean burgers that are really simple to make and outstanding great flavor
Nice.........my cooking is going down the drain. In fact, it has become pathetic...However, this little note might just get me back on track. The big issue right now is weening myself off some meds for that disastrous nerve issue in my kisser. Since the Doc's warned me that a 30-40 lb weight gain could be expected its off to the veggie stand again. Big old tomato sandwiches sound really nice and are sure to beat Raisin Bran and peanut butter crackers.........
Your veggie concoctions are really outstanding, but believe it or not veggies out here in the woods and in Florida no less are priced way out of line............$2.00 for 1 tomato! I planted some last year and the deer loved them and everything else they could swipe..........really kind of funny.....they were just waiting for them to ripen.
Tomatoes are gearing down. We had big tomato & bacon sandwiches on sesame hamburger buns for dinner. I like mine with mayo spread on the buns, Brian likes with guacamole spread. Won't be more than another week or two for those big slabs of red tomato slices. 
Still getting lots of tomatillos though, so I'll have to make more green sauce this week. I'll probably can some jars of it since there'll be too much for just keeping in the fridge. Those plants get mighty big! Next year I'll have to remember to give them more elbow room on all sides.
I also discovered that tomatillo branches are absolutely gorgeous when cut and arranged in a vase. The sun shines through the light green leaves, and the little tomatillos 'lanterns' hang from the stems, draping gracefully. Beautiful! and they last for almost 2 weeks in a vase looking nice.
For some dumb reason, I really like "Froggy Went A'Courtin".
Kendra is a great player-- of both mountain and hammered dulcimers! I really enjoyed the interview and photos. She is a great source of information because it is part of her heritage.
Great interview, Redmando! I had the pleasure of meeting Kendra and Bob at the Traditional Dulcimore Gathering in Berea, Ky in May. Kendra brought some of the instruments she talks about...including the courting dulcimer, which she and Bob played. Great memories!
I had a lovely conversation with Kendra Ward about dulcimer playing in Appalachia. Kendra kindly let me use some of her great family photographs too: https://mdconversations.blogspot.com/2019/09/6-kendra-ward-from-appalachian-ohio-usa.html
@don-grundy Hey, a bench counts!
Thanks to everyone who's welcomed me here! To Irene (whom I tried to reply to earlier but apparently forgot to hit the post button), I just hold it on my lap when I'm sitting. I love the drone sound too, to me it's a big part of the specialness of the mountain dulcimer, but I also want to play chords. I love lots of kinds of music, including jazz, and want to play it all! To Terry, I will keep in mind about the bar stool, but not without a seat belt!
I do have another question—is anyone familiar with Harris & Young dulcimers? I'm guessing that they are no longer (or not much anyway) active? Nothing shows up on Googlemaps except a house when I search for their address.
