I am now on week 2 of my tin whistle carreer and after a 4 hour drive to Lake Tahoe (playing the whistle while my wife drove…) I have refined my newbie skills to possible beginner status. Before we left on Friday My guitarist friend (who started learning the whistle with me) had a mountain dulcimer that a friends toddler son broke the head off of a few years back.
Well to make a long story short… We got some Elmers wood glue and some clamps together… and… you guessed it… we fixed the dulcimer!
Now I am having a great time ‘jamming’ with the dulcimer with my whistle.
Wow. I’m surprised that common glue would provide enough strength to hold the head on. Maybe the string pressure isn’t as high as a mandolin or guitar.
You’re right, Geek. Mountain dulcimer tension is not nearly as great as a guitar or mandolin. But wasn’t it wood glue that was used? That stuff is amazingly strong. [Looking back, I see that it was wood glue.]
That is awesome that the instrument was fixed! I bet if you took it somewhere to be fixed, they would have charged you at least $60 and probably even more. It’s nice when you can fix things yourself and save tons of money!
I took up both instruments about the same time, a few years back. One evening I was at a friend’s house, and we were playing music on dulcimer, mandolin, harmonica, and jug. I left the dulcimer there, and was later informed that it had been destroyed by falling into the washing machine.
If it had been at anyone else’s house, I never would have believed that the dulcimer could have fallen in the washer, but I knew full well that it was exactly what would have happened there.
My McSpadden dulcimer and my Kantele are both sulking bigtime on the wall while I wrestle with all this whistle stuff for the Ceilidh tomorow and the charity gig in July. Shame I can’t do both at the same time…
