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
“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.
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
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
2 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
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.
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 3
Ray’s shop is on the sec-
--
-
-
4 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
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.
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 5
TOOLS & MATERIALS: WHAT YOU’LL NEED
-
TOOLS
-
-
-
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.
6 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
Two last tOOLs & a NOTE
-
NECESSARY SUPPLIES & HARDWARE TO BUY, BEG, BORROW, or SCROUNGE
-
-
DULCIMER MATERIALS & HARDWARE
Ray with one of his cardboard dulcimers, made from a favorite beer box; in the background is one of his guitars.
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 7
step 1: The
neck
MATERIALS
-
--
-
-
-
--
-
-
--
-
Ray made his bandsaw 35 years ago, from a kit
8 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
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
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 9
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
--
10 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
OR(true dimensions of
wood vary)
7 8”3 4”
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 11
12 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
step 2: LOCATING FRET SLOTS
-
-
-
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 13
CUTTING FRET SLOTS
-
-
-
14 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
--
-
-
why
get your frets in place!
Complete Guitar Repair
--
-
-
precise Fret measures
inches fret inches decimal number fraction
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 15
Usin
g t
his c
ha
rt
Go s
low
, be c
arefu
l, pay a
tten
tion
!
th
e fret
cha
rt
ra
y n
um
ber
s th
e no
tes in
ro
ma
n n
um
era
ls on
th
e nec
k so
yo
u c
an
ea
sily see t
hem
wh
en lea
rn
ing
; no
te t
he 2 u
nn
um
ber
ed h
alf st
eps
III
IIIIV
VVI
VIIVIII
(22 58”)
16 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
PREPPING FRETS FOR GLUEING
-
-
-
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 17
-
18 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
GLUEING THE FRETS IN PLACE
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 19
DRILL HOLES FOR STRING ANCHORS
filing the frets
-
20 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
fret ends
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 21
initial shaping of the neck
22 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
TIME FOR A BREAK!
Ray plays his
cardboard fiddle
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 23
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
24 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
Jon Crandell, photo
Jon Crandell, photo
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 25
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.
26 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
step 3: MAKING THE PLYWOOD BACK
-
materials
dimensions
-
-
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 27
optional: routing a groove for a solid edge
-
-
--
ROUTER BIT
DULCIMER BACK JIG
28 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
-
To de-
a
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 29
cutting the blocks for attaching the neck to the back
-
-
30 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
GLUEING BLOCKS TO BASE
-
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 31
GLUEING NECK TO BODY
-
32 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
CUTTING BRACE BLOCKS FOR THE CARDBOARDCUTTINGTEMPORARY BLOCKS
SHELF BLOCKS
MEASURING FOR END BLOCKS
PLACING TEMPORARY BLOCKS
MEASURING FOR END BLOCKS
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 33
--
34 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
-
Step 4: SELECTING & CUTTING CARDBOARD
-
-
-
-
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 35
36 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
glueing sides & top
-
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 37
-
--
38 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
preview: how to determine the proper bridge height
-
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 39
step 5: lacquer finish for the neck
-
40 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
step 6: fitting the cardboard top
-
-
Be sure not to glue the clamping boards to your in-strument! Back them off the neck at least 1/8”.
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 41
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.
42 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
step 6: remanufacturing tuners
-
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 43
44 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
step 7: installing the tuners
The exagerated
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 45
step 8: mounting the tuners
-
-
46 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
step 9: mounting the bridge prior to stringing your instrument
--
-
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 47
step 10: mounting the strings & finishing the bridge
-
48 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
the short version:
tunging in the mixolydian mode
Play your Dulcimer
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 49
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
50 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
basic chord chart
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 51
musical resources
Anthropologist friends brought back from Indonesia this beautiful big spoon covered in goatskin and strung to serve a different kind of nourishment.
52 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
meeting ray
--
-
-
-
-
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 53
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
--
54 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
--
-“I can sing!” I didn’t
-
Jon Crandell photo
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 55
th
-
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
56 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
-th
--
-
-
-
--
Rita Colins playing one of Ray’s “Onion”
dulcimers. This one has a spruce top.
Jon Crandell photo
handprintpress.com Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer 57
if
-togetherness
motion change munis
mutate
-
-
-
-
Bowling Alone
-
-
-
work together, seek
together com
petere
.
all -
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.
58 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
-
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.
-
-
Jon Crandell photo
Jon Crandell photo
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
60 Make A Ray Jacobs’ Rocky Mountain Dulcimer handprintpress.com
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
ABOUTwww.handprintpress.com
* Mud, Hands, A House
*
excl
usi
ve
engl
ish
edit
ion
of
the
best
na
tura
l bu
ild
ing
dv
d
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!
10
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