In October, 2016, I was approached by Kaitlyn Anthony, a colleague at Citrus High School, to participate in a project. She was finishing a Photojournalism class at the University of Florida and felt my dulcimer building was a unique topic, worthy of her culminating documentary.
I started the project with an interview, not realizing that my noodling around on the instrument I had with me was going to be used in the project. When we started, I did not have a specific instrument to build, so I made sketches of an experimental project. Soon after that, I received an order for a bass dulcimer from a gentleman in Oregon, and Kaitlyn came over to my tiny shop periodically to take some snapshots of the build.
Interestingly, I completed the bass almost exactly 40 years since I learned to build these things at Maryville College.
Here is Kaitlyn’s final project:
