1978 Bernard Dimet Hurdy-Gurdy

Bernard Dimet was a French folk musician and he played in a band called Maluzerne. Shall we see videos? Click here... and here... and here... and here. He also made hurdy-gurdies and they're dang pretty.

This literally hung-out for almost a year and a half in the racks before final "finishing" today because I'm terrified of hurdy-gurdies. I've worked on two aside from this one and... the thing about them is... if you have any sort of plans for your day or a schedule to keep, you might as well throw it all out the window. These are time-intensive to get sounding remotely serviceable and, while one can coffee-speed-watch videos all night long about getting them to work their best, I think the truth is that -- like anything else -- knowledge only comes with time and exposure.

Time and exposure are not things other family members, house-critters, or even neighbors desire of a hurdy-gurdy, however. Once the initial rush of bagpipe-like enthusiasm dies-off, people might look at you first with scorn as you turn the crank while "tuning" it or "setting the keys" or "getting the drone just right" and then quickly their looks turn into concern. Shortly after that they harbor fear, hatred, and distrust.

Jokes spill out naturally. I was putting new felt on the strings and Bonnie came in and I said to her, "Ah, that sounds a bit more musical!" after testing it. "Does it?" she said.

Then I told her the jokes I'd been telling to myself about what to say about it for the writeup. "What if I told you about an instrument that could make whole provinces infertile? That could salt the earth of your enemies from hundreds of miles away -- without salt? That could make any child grow up deaf, dumb, tone-deaf, and numb?

Yes, the squeals of a million murdered pigs filled the workshop today. For hours. Four hours. Six hours. How long? My buddy Ivan gave me a collected group of luthier articles sometime back and I remember reading shop-talk between Dan Erlewine and Frank Ford. It felt "like home" with their chatting about how to charge for confounding repairs -- do you charge people actual shop time or is it sliding-scale? For those of us with hearts, it's almost definitely sliding scale to the point of bankruptcy. Some things are labors of love... or spite?

All that joking aside, it really is a cool thing. Right? I think? It's also gorgeous. Flamed walnut back and sides? Rope binding? Impeccable workmanship? Carved pegbox?

I added 4:1 Perfection Pegs (no more coming back to the instrument after months of disuse -- it is a hurdy-gurdy -- and finding all the pegs popped!) and used fancy Thomastik rope-core-steel strings on it (tuning-stable) to upgrade its practicality factor. I added some "springback" foam to keep the keys from rattling around like loose fillings. I did all sorts of things I had to do to other hurdy-gurdies to make them functional as well.

But still! I fail! I think I shall rename them all Sisy-phurdy. Rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling...