It's fun to compare our environments and the trees that grow there.  I like using the wood that's local to my area, though if I got the chance to use exotics that would be fun.  I have a sister in Kansas and some day maybe I'll ask her if she can bring me an osage orange branch.

Marsha, I expect you don't have to worry about the head of your drum getting tight and clangy in the air there?  Out here the air's very dry, and I usually wet the head down some before I perform, and sometimes I can hear the pitch get higher as it dries out, while I'm playing it.

Mountain Mahogany does not grow east of Colorado.  It has a Janka hardness of about 3200 -- roughly the same as the Ebonies.  Makes great noters, nuts & bridges for Mountain dulcimers, tippers for bodhran, musical bones, and similar projects.

I've never heard of it living in Pennsylvania. I see that it is very hard and dense. I should make a good tipper. I sure the shillelagh and walking stick are very sturdy.

Ken

"the dulcimer sings a sweet song."

"Mountain Mahogany" is virtually unknown to those of us living east of the Rockies.

I have some nice, short, Black Cherry planks seasoning in the barn. I split them from short (roughly 30 inch) segments of a fallen tree with a froe.

Mountain mahogany grows in the area where I live.  It's lovely wood, I like its properties of hardness and density, and of course it's relatively easy to get, without having to spend extra.  A few years ago I found a stand close to my mother's house; in it was a couple of dead trees.  I harvested them and from them have so far made a shillelagh, a tall walking staff, and now I'm making this tipper.

Maybe you can finish this today, but why Mountain Mahogany? I should think a limb of Swamp Mahogany would work as well.

I started playing bodhran about 12 years ago, mostly solo along with recordings, though there have been some local groups that I've been playing with occasionally for the past couple of years.  My first one broke last summer and I got a new one a little while later, after carving a tipper from a cherry branch.  Now I'm carving another tipper from a mountain mahogany branch.

@marsha-elliott I went in the opposite direction. I started with the bodhrán almost 20 years ago and sat out the slow airs and laments. Two years ago I was given my first dulcimer, and I am almost ready to take it to sessions. It is a good combination, as the dulcimer gets lost in the fast tunes, and people who try playing the bodhrán over the airs and laments are the ones who give it the bad reputation it has. Drum On!

Nice Marsha!  Decades ago I played bass drum with Scottish Pipe Bands.  Then a couple years before Covid I occasionally played dulcimer along with friends in a group called Pine island Sound. The I built the  laptop Cajon below  --  a Brazilian hand beaten box drum -- that I played with them until  Covid sort of busted things up.  I more or less "tuned" the Cajon to sound good around the key of D.  It can be played soft or loud as well.  

12"x18" x 2.75"  The top is a fabulous piece of Oregon Myrtle, the sides maple and the back 'piano' Port Orford Cedar.

Can't find the pix I had of me with  the group...  

Cajon front.jpg  •  110KB

Looks like a good time. The Bodhran is a really cool instrument. For how deceptively simple they look, they are very complex. The soft but powerful tones fit great into almost any type of music in my opinion
Nate 

Sounds like a lot of fun Marsha. I was going to say that you need a banjo player, but I see that behind the man on the right that person might be playing a banjo. And to the right of  man on the right that appears to by a banjo on the chair.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

In my mountain community there are so many fun Jam sessions available. I wanted to have an instrument that I could use when the tunes get too fast or complicated for my dulcimer. A few years ago I bought a used Bodhran from a vender at a Dulcimer festival, found YouTube videos with lessons and in a couple of years I was “rockin’ it. I was going to buy a better one on our planned trip to Scotland/Ireland, but the pandemic hit and the trip was canceled. So I ordered one shipped here from a well known builder in Dublin and it totally upped my game. I still LOVE my dulcimer, but am having the time of my life playing the Bodhran.

 Photo is of the Jam I play with every Thursday night (April thru September) at a local tap-room: