By Terry Butler
Duet with National Mt. Dulcimer Champion Joe Collins in the background using his great CD “Looking Ahead”. Joe gave his permission for me to use a few of his songs for this purpose. Thank you Joe! I absolutely LOVE this CD! I’m playing a tenor bowed psaltery tuned chromatically to the key of D (C# and F#s are moved to the right side and Cs and Fs were moved to the left. This way all notes can be played on the right side!
I’ve been working on a new secret project – actually several of them. Only have one
finished so far, but thought I’d share photos of this one.
The psaltery is 2-5/8″. The bow is 2″ The pins are cut from the tiniest nails I could find – 1/4″ after cutting. Only 1/8″ of each pin sticks up above the wood. Really hard stringing this thing.
The bow strings are 14/0 black fly tying thread – super fine and 8 strands.
I plan on turning some of these into tac backed pins with the pinch type backs like tie tacks.
Also plan on turning a few into pendant necklaces. Some will just be miniatures.
Cost will be $50 a set (psaltery + bow) plus $3 shipping (anywhere in the world) if anyone is interested and that is a bargain. It took a full 7 hours to string one, not including a half day for adding pins, and many more hours to make the body of the psaltery and bow and add 5 coats of lacquer to the wood (plus sanding). I tried adding rosin to the bow to see if I could hear any sound, but didn’t.
Could just be too high for me to hear. 🙂
Cost will be $50 a set (psaltery + bow) plus $3 shipping (anywhere in the world) if anyone is interested and that is a bargain. It took a full 7 hours to string one, not including a half day for adding pins, and many more hours to make the body of the psaltery and bow and add 5 coats of lacquer to the wood (plus sanding). I tried adding rosin to the bow to see if I could hear any sound, but didn’t.
Could just be too high for me to hear. 🙂
This is so beautiful!
Thanks to Terry for sharing these.
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