Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument...

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Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build- and-play. by Kiko Denzer, with help and inspiration from Ray and Shirley Jacobs HandPrintPress.com

Transcript of Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument...

Page 1: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimermake this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

by Kiko Denzer, with help

and inspiration from Ray and Shirley Jacobs

HandPrintPress.com

Page 2: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

“IN THE END, WE SHALL HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF CYNICISM, SCEPTICISM AND HUMBUG, AND WILL WANT TO LIVE - MORE MUSICALLY.” *

* Vincent Van Gogh, to his brother Theo, 24 Sept., 1888 in Arles. Translated by Mrs. Johanna van Gogh-Bonger,

ed. Robert Harrison, no. 542. http://webexhibits.org

Ray’s wife Shirley is

holding one of Ray’s cardboard

guitars. At her foot is a

dulcimer.

Page 3: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer: Build this Gorgeous Sounding Instrument from a 2x4, Cardboard, & Plywood. It’s cheap, Beautiful, & Easy-to-Build-and-Play Kiko Denzer, January, 2013 ISBN: 9780615748931

Published by Hand Print Press (paper & PDF) under a creative commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

You may share, copy, distribute and transmit the work for any non-commercial purpose — but please do let us know! And YES!~ holler if you have ideas for a derivative project.

Downloadable PDF available free from www.handprintpress.com: 541-438-4300

Also contact us! about dulcimer kits & (discounted!) bulk paperback orders

OTHERS BY KIKO DENZER:Build Your Own Earth OvenDig Your Hands in the DirtMake a Simple SundialHand Print Press

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ContentsForeword ............................................................................................................................................. 2Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 3Tools & Materials: what you’ll need ..................................................................... 5Step 1: The Neck ....................................................................................................................... 7 Neck Dimensions (chart) .......................................................................................... 8Step 2: Frets: Locating Fret Slots .................................................................................. 12 Cutting Fret Slots ...................................................................................................... 13 Get Your Frets in Place ........................................................................................... 14 Fret Chart ..................................................................................................................... 15 Prepping Frets for Glueing ................................................................................... 16 Glueing the Frets in Place ..................................................................................... 18 Filing the Frets ............................................................................................................ 19 Fret Ends ....................................................................................................................... 20Initial Shaping of the Neck ........................................................................................ 21Fiddle Break! (Instrument photos) ............................................................................... 22Step 3: The Plywood Back ......................................................................................... 26 Cutting the Blocks for Attaching the Neck .................................................. 29 Glueing Blocks to Base ........................................................................................... 30 Glueing Neck to Body ............................................................................................. 31 Cutting Brace Blocks for the Cardboard ....................................................... 32Step 4: Selecting & Cutting Cardboard ..................................................... 34 Glueing Sides & Top .................................................................................................. 36Preview: How to Determine the Proper Bridge Height ......................................... 38Step 5: Lacquer Finish for the Neck .............................................................. 39Step 6: Fitting the Cardboard Top ................................................................... 40Step 7: Remanufacturing Tuners ..................................................................... 42Step 8: Tuners: Installing .................................................................................................... 44 Mounting Tuners ........................................................................................................ 45Step 9: Mounting the Bridge ................................................................................. 46Step 10: Mounting Strings & Finishing the Bridge ........................ 47Play your Dulcimer ............................................................................................................ 48Basic Chord Chart ................................................................................................................ 50Musical Resources ............................................................................................................... 51STORIES: Meeting Ray ............................................................................................................... 52 FAME: An American Teacher & her Czech Students Learn About Language & Harmony ............................................................... 59About Hand Print Press (other titles) ......................................................... 61Dulcimer Kits & Cottage Industry: ordering & participating .............. 62

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I MET Ray Jacobs one May in California; he was teaching people to make something that looked like a 3-string banjo out of cardboard and scrap wood — but it sounded... ...amazing!

It looked so simple, I thought “shoot, I could play that!” Ray told stories about 20 years of teaching fourth graders, not just so they could make and play these simple, 3-stringed instruments but so they could participate in the world. He put an old V-8 engine in the classroom and challenged them to take it apart and put it together; he took them to a local pond to squelch and splash and take buckets of pond wa-ter back to class, where they put it in split 55-gallon drums so they could play and learn when their “other work” was done; he shepherded 20 generations of kids into 5th grade, many of them with dulcimers they had made themselves, on which they could all play melody and chords — ex-traordinary gifts!

I thought, “someone should put this into a book so every 4th grade teacher can do what Ray did!” I’ve been a “teaching art-ist” in the Oregon schools, and know how

is for kids to get good, hands-on activities. When teachers are so bound by schedules, test requirements, and policy that they can’t afford to engage kids in anything

outsider to do the creative projects.

Life and beauty grow by exchanges of gratitude, grace, and peace, by which we learn about love and feeling and how to belong to something larger than our own

small selves. It comes natu-rally, asking only that we participate. Participation

makes community, and community makes the soil where beauty feeds and culture grows.

Ray’s dulcimer is the kind of gift that makes it possible . But to measure the exchange only in dollars is like trying to grow a garden on concrete. Seeds — life! — need dirt, and dirt came as a gift long before we divided and converted it into a speculative commodity. Real estate, prop-erty, (intellectual or material), belongs to life, as we do. If we make merchandise of everything we think, feel, say, or make, we enslave ourselves. A free people sing, celebrate, and share. Ray told me, “if I can spend an hour or two making music, it’s a good day.”

This book is published under a creative commons license: please share the free PDF. The paperback can be had from Hand Print Press or Amazon; that price helps pay production, distribution and, (perhaps) some living and working ex-penses for author and family. Ray also sells instructional CDs, insruments, as well as his and Shirley’s music. Write them at POB 794, Eureka MT 59917.

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Ray’s shop is on the sec-

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I didn’t ask why the shop was up top, but I admired the stair design, which leads to a tiny landing just below a trap door. On one side of the landing is a small, final step: when you reach the landing, you turn, put your right foot on the small step and launch up into the shop. Coming down is not a simple reversal, but a new dance in which a small mis-step could drop you much faster than you’d want to go. Every entrance and exit made me stop and pay atten-tion.

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TOOLS & MATERIALS: WHAT YOU’LL NEED

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TOOLS

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Ray playing one of his round-bodied guitars: this one was hanging on the wall of the On the Fly Cafe where we stopped for breakfast on the way to Bluebird lake. Ray wasn’t much bothered that it had a gap-ing hole in the back (by which it was hung on the wall); it made good music while we waited for eggs and toast. Ray typically puts sound holes around the edge instead of the center, both to maximize reso-nance and to minimize the visibility of interior structural elements.

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Two last tOOLs & a NOTE

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NECESSARY SUPPLIES & HARDWARE TO BUY, BEG, BORROW, or SCROUNGE

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DULCIMER MATERIALS & HARDWARE

Ray with one of his cardboard dulcimers, made from a favorite beer box; in the background is one of his guitars.

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step 1: The

neck

MATERIALS

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Ray made his bandsaw 35 years ago, from a kit

Page 11: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

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NECK dimensionstotal length

width

thickness

peg end thickness

sound hole

peg head end

...by 1½ ” wide...

the neck piece is 1” thick...

string length is 225 8”, from nut to bridge

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thin rails help transfer vibration

bridge platform

bridge platform

make the sound hole by drilling holes at the ends; then cut the rest out.

string length is 225 8”, from nut to bridge

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OR(true dimensions of

wood vary)

7 8”3 4”

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Page 15: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

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step 2: LOCATING FRET SLOTS

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CUTTING FRET SLOTS

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why

get your frets in place!

Complete Guitar Repair

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precise Fret measures

inches fret inches decimal number fraction

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Page 19: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

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PREPPING FRETS FOR GLUEING

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Page 21: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

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GLUEING THE FRETS IN PLACE

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DRILL HOLES FOR STRING ANCHORS

filing the frets

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fret ends

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initial shaping of the neck

Page 25: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

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TIME FOR A BREAK!

Ray plays his

cardboard fiddle

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Here are a couple of Ray’s other instruments: a triangular fidde with a

more traditional look, and a banjo built from a gourd.

Vibration from the strings gets into the soundbox through the connections at the top and bottom of the gourd, and through the bridge (a piece of brazing rod), which sits on posts attached directly to the cedar top.

Shirley did the decorations.

Shirley Jacobs, photo

Page 27: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

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Jon Crandell, photo

Jon Crandell, photo

Page 28: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

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Jared Smith (below, L) was the first person to build a dulcimer from this book. He said, “The neck started out as a round doug fir pole, that I attened a face on using chisels, drawknives and a hand plane — no power tools at all! I used a 1-1/2” nail as the nut, three different tuning pegs from the local guitar repair shop, and gorilla glue to hold it together. Other than that, I stuck to the instructions.”

Jared later told me about this home made guitar that his brother John got in Madagascar from the boy who made it. He traded the boy his own fancy commercial travel guitar. The body is carved out of one piece, covered by a thin top with a soundhole. The strings are fishing line and bike cables. One broke due to rust, but the boy had apparently planned for that; a few days after he gave John the guitar he tracked him down and gave him a few extra cables (you can see them wrapped up around the headstock of the guitar). It has ta-pered wooden tuning pegs that actually work remarkably well! For even more wonderful hand-made inspiration, look up sothosounds.org, and “landfill harmonic” on Vimeo.

Musicians in Madagascar, photos courtesy of Smith bros.

Page 29: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

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step 3: MAKING THE PLYWOOD BACK

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materials

dimensions

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Page 30: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

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optional: routing a groove for a solid edge

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ROUTER BIT

DULCIMER BACK JIG

Page 31: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

28 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com

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To de-

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cutting the blocks for attaching the neck to the back

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Page 33: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

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GLUEING BLOCKS TO BASE

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GLUEING NECK TO BODY

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CUTTING BRACE BLOCKS FOR THE CARDBOARDCUTTINGTEMPORARY BLOCKS

SHELF BLOCKS

MEASURING FOR END BLOCKS

PLACING TEMPORARY BLOCKS

MEASURING FOR END BLOCKS

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Page 37: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

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Page 39: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

36 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com

glueing sides & top

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38 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com

preview: how to determine the proper bridge height

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step 5: lacquer finish for the neck

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step 6: fitting the cardboard top

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Be sure not to glue the clamping boards to your in-strument! Back them off the neck at least 1/8”.

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HEY! SOUNDS GOOD!

Ray points out that hi-end speakers are made from cardboard. The proof is in the sound box...

INSTALL ANCHOR SCREWS FOR THE

STRINGS

These are 1!” screws — almost any type will do, so long as there are no sharp

threads at the top of the shank that might

cut a string.

Page 45: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

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step 6: remanufacturing tuners

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step 7: installing the tuners

The exagerated

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step 8: mounting the tuners

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46 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com

step 9: mounting the bridge prior to stringing your instrument

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step 10: mounting the strings & finishing the bridge

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48 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com

the short version:

tunging in the mixolydian mode

Play your Dulcimer

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Ray’s Color Coded Chords

Each fret (except the dotted half-steps) indicates a note, which Ray numbers directly on the neck for ease of learning. The first note on each string is simply the sound the string makes by itself, so “no. 7” is really the 8th note. This is not typical of most printed music.

steps!

10

Play your Dulcimer the long version:

to play chords:

No dots

Page 53: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

50 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com

basic chord chart

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musical resources

Anthropologist friends brought back from Indonesia this beautiful big spoon covered in goatskin and strung to serve a different kind of nourishment.

Page 55: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

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meeting ray

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-“I can sing!” I didn’t

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Jon Crandell photo

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Every two weeks, Ray and Shirley get together with a group of folks to sing, play, and share potluck. The week my family and I were there, the group came to Ray and Shirley’s. About 20 of us circled up in the log cabin, with Ray’s home-made dulcimers (and guitars), a wash tub bass, wooden spoons, standard guitars, drums, accordions, fiddles, etc. We went around the circle, choosing, singing, and playing everything from old standards, to Beatles tunes, to originals written by some of the group. Ray likes a smaller group — this one, he says, “has gotten a little big.” Rita, one of the particpants, learned 20 songs on the dulcimer, and took them to the Czech Republic, where she started a folkgroup with student teachers of the English language...(see story on p. 57)

Jon Crandell photo

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56 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com

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Rita Colins playing one of Ray’s “Onion”

dulcimers. This one has a spruce top.

Jon Crandell photo

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handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 57

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Shirley with one of Ray’s cardboard guitars: the cardboard came from a particular brand of bike box which used to be just the right single-thickness cardboard, but now they use double-ply — good for the bike, too heavy for an instrument top! Under the soundboard is bracing, to support the weight of the bridge and dis- tribute vibration. Cardboard aside, the unique features are the way the neck attaches on top of the soundboard just at the ends, and the bridge design.

Page 61: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

58 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com

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More of Rays innovations: the neck of this banjo “ oats” above the soundbox (a gourd) connected solely at the bridge. No inner bracing required; the neck provides all the strength needed.

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Jon Crandell photo

Jon Crandell photo

Page 62: Make a Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain DulcimerMountain Dulcimer make this GORGEOUS sounding instrument from a 2x4, cardboard, & plywood. It’s cheap, beautiful, & easy-to-build-and-play.

handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 59

Editor’s note: I met Rita Collins at Ray’s folk music potluck. She coordinates Arts and Education Programs

in Eureka, Montana. In 2008 she taught in the Czech Republic at the department of English language and

literature in the Faculty of Education at Masaryk University, in Brno. Her Czech students were studying to

become teachers of English language. When she learned that the department head was going to have a birthday,

she offered to teach her students a English-language birthday song to sing in celebration. They had so much

fun, they started FAME – or “Fun with American Music for Everyone” – which helped them improve their

command of the language, and invited them, informally, to share their pleasure and enthusiasm for something

much deeper than simply earning a degree or a living. Rita’s account of the project follows.

Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.

– Vaclav Havel

FAME: An American teacher and her Czech students learn language and harmony by singing and playing…

by Rita Collins

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60 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com

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handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 61

We offer books and experience to help more people participate more fully in their lives, and communities. The titles on the website (our own, and others’) address the arts of living, from making stoves, ovens, and other things, to growing food and building houses, and otherwise learning to follow nature’s creative (and chaotic) principles.

Publishing means to make public – and a healthy public participates in the life of the nation — in every aspect of work and life, not just shopping.

The founders understood that the Latin root of “republic” means “things of the public;” they believed that every citizen shared responsibility for land,

livelihood, and our childrens’ futures. Without a healthy, participating public there can be no private nor common wealth. Unless we all feed the goose, there can be no golden eggs!

The arts of living can’t be abstracted. Aristotle said, “what we learn to do, we learn by doing.” So Hand Print Press follows the way of the doer, designer, artist, inventor in all of us, who works to fit into her place and his community, to marry beauty with utility, and to restore and enrich the sources of all beauty.

HAND PRINT PRESS“What we learn to do, we learn by doing.” — Aristotle

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62 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com

I don’t want to deprive you of the op-portunity to exercise your own hands and wits (as Bill Coperthwaite might put it), but I also recognize that some-times, it makes sense to let people do what they love most, and trade for the things they want but don’t have time to make for themselves.

So — if you want a dulcimer but have not time or space to do all the work yourself, I know some craftsmen who can provide you with dulcimer kits (or even finished dulcimers, but I don’t really want to deprive you of all the fun!)

Dulcimer kits consist of a neck, back, and all the bits and pieces: blocks, cardboard, tuning pegs (already re-manufactured), and strings. All you have to do is put them together, glue them up, decorate, and finish.

Ray was selling kits for $100 when I met him in 2012, but I don’t want to start a franchise here, I just want to make sure that folks who want instru-ments can get them — and perhaps help a few neighbors who want to work at home doing what they love to do.

I’m not sure how best to go about it, but here’s a start: If you’d like a kit, get in touch with me, either through the contact form at handprintpress.com, or at POB 576, Blodgett OR 907326, 541-438-4300, and I’ll put you in touch with a maker and you can figure out the details.

If you’re a maker, let me know that, too, and I’ll add your name to the list. That way, maybe we can hook up mak-ers and players, teachers and learners all where they live, so they can all make music together, too!

DULCIMER KITS: HOW TO ORDER

steps!

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Here’s a guide for anyone in need of good, affordable instruments suitable for beginners and experts alike. Teachers, homeschoolers, camp counselors, church groups, community minstrels, & all who like to work with their hands can use it to transform ‘just junk’ into songs, beauty, & community.

HandPrintPress.com