Mercer Museum Zither Replica

So... awhile back I was looking at pix of 'transitional' dulcimers' on the Internet -- instruments half way between the ancestral no-fretboard Pennsylvania zither and the raised central fretboard dulcimer, when I saw a couple pictures of zithers that just caught my fancy.  Not the usual 'square tailed', looong tuning head zithers we usually see, these two had distinctive round tails and scroll heads.  One was a bowed zither with violin type tuning pegs; the other was a fretted zither with autoharp type steel tuning pins.  They both are in the Mercer Museum and to my eye appear to be made by the same builder.

Long story short -- Ken Longfield got me a contact at the Museum, who got me a ton of photos and detailed measurements of the fretted zither, so I could make a replica.   

This is the story of that build.  I'll be adding photos and details as the build progresses, so stay tuned...

The Mock up photo is just the parts leaned together to give me an idea of how big this thing is gonna be:  36" tip-to-tip, 4.5" wide at the tail tapering to 1.625" at the tip of the scroll, 3.5" high at the tail tapering down to 2.375" at the head junction and 2" at the scroll disk.