My son and I were walking around an antique store when we ran into this bed warmer hanging on the wall. I had no idea what it was at the time, but my son encouraged me to get it and make a guitar out of it. The round hollow body was just wide enough to fit a guitar neck, and I figured the brass body would resonate quite nicely. I was right! I decided to make a dulcimer out of it instead of a regular 3 string guitar, and I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. I added a flat humbucker pickup on the inside, so it can be played through an amplifier.
The artwork on the face is raised, so it was difficult to place the bridge. In fact, if you look closely you’ll see that the side with the high D strings has a shorter action than the low D string. This is just as well, since I intend to play it by only fretting the high D strings and using the D and A strings as sympathetic strings. The bridge itself is made from the rod of a telescoping back scratcher, resting on top of two nuts. I used eye hooks to position the strings in the right spot, matching the grooves on the hand carved bone nut. I made the neck entirely from scrap wood, using pine and another hardwood that used to be part of some furniture. I stained it and sanded it a bit instead of using fret markers.
I took it on a camping trip the day after it was done, and had a blast strumming along by the campfire. It is now my go-to instrument for camping.
The finished product The grandkids giving it a test run Pay no attention to the sloppy placement of the eye hooks…whatever works! Bone nut carved from a dog chewing bone The raised art made bridge placement difficult Ghosted flat humbucker. Small but sounds great! Here’s what I started with. This bed warmer was hanging on the wall of an antique store
