Kirby's Fremont

Making Beautiful Music

By Kirby Lindsay

Ray Mooers in front of his well-concealed shop and factory.

Dusty Strings is one of those. They opened, in a funky basement space below Costas Opa Greek restaurant, in 1982 to manufacture and sell beautiful hammered dulcimers and elegant harps. Today, 30 workers craft the trademark instruments five days a week. Ray walked me through the crowded workshop and showed me the precision process.

Through the repair shop, where all manner of instruments are fixed, we entered the woodshop. There the mill team sorts through rough planks of lumber. Dusty Strings instruments are made from high-quality woods including walnut, maple, mahogany, and bubinga (an African rosewood). Each mill team member is responsible for cutting a stock supply of specific parts of the dulcimers and harps including necks, soundboards, and pin blocks. They are cut by templates and sanded. The leftover pieces of expensive scrap lumber are donated to The Giving Tree, a non-profit that employs homeless men to make toys.

In the crowded, sawdust-filled rooms, people move carefully around machines covered in caution signs. One, a computer controlled router (CNC router, for short) trims and drills holes in five harp necks at a time. Elsewhere, a belt sander is used on a stack of soundboard pieces while a dangerously sharp shaper cuts an aesthetically pleasing indent in the neck of each harp.

In one corner an experiment was being done on a laid out sound box panel. Here, research and development is the entire focus of one employee. In 1978, Ray turned his instrument-making hobby into a business. In all this time he never stopped improving that quality. Changes in design and construction are continually incorporated into the process.

Removing of the clamps from a signature Dusty Strings dulcimer.

The finish team assembles all the parts provided by the mill team. They finish the pairs of delicate hammers used to play notes on the dulcimer strings. These are made of book-matched wood, allowing a symmetrical, visually pleasing grain. "Customers don't expect it," Ray agreed with me, "but we do it." The harp sound box is constructed of five facets of book-matched wood, cut so carefully that seams are invisible. 10 to 12 of these boxes are needed each week for the top-of-the-line Dusty Strings harp. There are "very few straight lines in a harp" and their construction is much more complex than a straight-edged dulcimer.

I watched dulcimers un-clamped after being glued together, and I examined the slightly bowed shape of the top. This arch makes it easier for the dulcimer to withstand the 1,500 pounds of tension of strings stretched across it. The assembled pieces are lacquered to show the natural elegance of the wood. Optional legs, for a harp, were being careful sprayed and sanded and sprayed again when I came by. In another small room, the "strings" are made. Some are wire, phosphor bronze or nylon. Bass strings are wrapped, using a lathe-like machine, with a fine nylon monofilament.

The post-production team takes over after spraying. The instruments are tuned, and set aside, once a day for a week. This gives the strings time to adjust to the tension. Instruments that must travel to Germany, or Japan, are packed in handmade cardboard boxes designed to securely fit the delicate contents. Before being packed, the strings on these instruments are loosened to avoid an accident. The post-production rooms are carpeted, finished spaces compared to the rest of the factory. Many exquisite harps fill the room, ready for artists to create enchanting music upon. By each Friday, these will be packed and shipped to music stores nationwide.

When Ray told me that the retail space would be expanded into some of the manufacturing space, I was mollified. The Dusty Strings acoustic music shop is an institution in Fremont, catering to all the needs of stringed-instrument musicians. Beyond their own signature instruments, they sell guitars, violins, banjos and bagpipes, when they find a reliable supplier, as well as music books and sound recordings.

They hold workshops in the post-production space on weekends, requiring employees to continuously pack and unpack their work. The move will provide space for both uses. And the rest of the factory? Ray then shared his wish for it, and I was reminded that many clouds have a silver lining. Dusty Strings wants to build a concert venue into their space, providing opportunities for fans of acoustic music, and under-exposed musicians, to gather together. Sweet music to my ears, indeed.

Santa Claus has failed to bring Kirby Lindsay a Dusty Strings hammered dulcimer, although she studies piano while she waits. If you have questions about Fremont, you may write to her c/o The Seattle Press or e-mail to fremont@oz.net.

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