Ray Schairer
©2002 Sandor Slomovits
Percy Danforth is a name familiar to most people in the bones-playing community worldwide. Percy, who learned to play the bones as a young child in the early 1900s, began teaching them to others in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the mid 1970s and went on to play and teach the bones throughout the United States and even in Great Britain right up until his death in 1992.
Less well known, but perhaps equally deserving of credit for the bones' rise in popularity in Percy's wake is Ray Schairer, the man who has fashioned all the bones that Percy and his many students – and the students of his students – have played.
Ray, born in 1922, is the third generation of Schairers to farm land near Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was born on his family's 120-acre family farm and grew up running it alongside his dad, and then continued by himself after his father's passing. He planted grains, milked cattle, raised sheep and chickens – doing what used to be called general farming.
Along the way, he also became a fine woodworker. His dad taught him the basic skills as a young boy (Ray still has the first workbench his father made for him) and Ray went on to hone his skills, fixing and making furniture and fashioning everything from wooden bowls to miniature mantle clocks, lathe works and other craft articles. As a young man he began teaching woodworking to boys and eventually, as the times changed, also to girls in the local 4-H program. Recently, the Washtenaw County Extension Service honored him for 55 years of 4-H leadership.
His fame as a woodworker and teacher is probably how he came to the attention of Percy Danforth. By 1976 Percy Danforth had enough bones students that he needed a steady supply of high quality wooden bones. Percy played everything from genuine bones to ones made of plastic and ivory, but he preferred the sound of wooden bones, especially pine. He came to Ray's workshop one day in 1976 and showed him the bones and asked if he could set up a system to turn out large quantities of wooden ones. Ray still has the curved piece of pine that Percy brought with him that day to show the exact curve he wanted on the bones.
A business relationship and friendship was formed which lasted till Percy's death and even beyond. Ray continued to send royalty payments from the sale of bones to Percy's wife Fran, and now sends them to his children.
For more than a quarter century, in the converted chicken coop on his farm that served as his wood shop, Ray has turned out bones. The wood shop is small, with its low ceilings serving as a reminder of the original purpose of the building. It is filled with all the standard woodworker's tools, band saw, belt sander, table saw, lathe, stone sharpening wheel and a full assortment of hand tools, plus some custom made power tools to shape and sand the bones.
To make the bones, Ray takes 5/4 inch boards of wood and first cuts out the curved shapes, about a foot long and about 3/8 inch thick, on his band saw. Then he pushes each piece twice through the shaper he designed and built with the help of an engineering professor at the University of Michigan. The shaper puts the concave shape on the bones that makes them comfortable to hold and play. Then he sands each bone on a three belt sander he fashioned, first with medium grade sandpaper, then with fine and finally with emory paper. Then it's back to the band saw to cut off the extra length on each end. (When finished, the bones are 7-3/8 inches long, but he needs the extra length at the beginning of the process to push them through the wood shaper and to hold them on the sanders.) Then it's over to the drum sander to sand the edges he's just cut. A coat of Minwax is next and finally he affixes the tiny decal in the center that says "Danforth Bones."
Ray estimates that in the past twenty eight years he has made over thirty thousand Danforth bones. ìI haven't had chickens in here for thirty years. I make more money turning out bones than I ever did raising chickens.î A comment that says more about the economic conditions of the family farm than it does on the profitability of bones making.
Although he's shaped thousands of bones Ray has, literally and figuratively, never cut corners. He uses the most modern of power tools, yet is a true craftsman in the old tradition of woodworkers. Certain that it would be possible to set up a mass production system for turning out the bones, he says that's not his way. He likes his more deliberate, hands-on approach and takes pride in knowing that he handled every pair of bones before they left his shop.
Percy sold the Danforth bones at his many concerts and workshops at schools, coffeehouses and festivals. He usually played bones made of soft pine but people asked about other woods and so Ray began turning out bones made of cherry, hickory, walnut, oak, maple and exotic woods like ebony and rosewood. As Percy's fame spread, he began getting orders from music stores and individuals all over the United States and from as far away as Europe, Australia and Japan. Today, ten years after Percy's death, Ray continues to fill orders from all over the world.
Ray himself has learned to rattle the bones but his primary musical instrument is the piano. He still plays on the beautiful old upright that his grandmother bought for his father when his father was six years old. "That's the piano I learned on too. We had a trio, my dad, sister and I. He also played the violin and my sister played the saxophone." With typical, and misplaced modesty Ray adds, "As long as I was accompanying them I could get away with it. But I didn't want to be up there as a soloist." Ray is retired now. He and his wife Jane, they recently celebrated their Golden Anniversary, now live in the Chelsea Methodist Retirement Community. Retirement has allowed him to play his beloved piano a little more, but has not slowed him down a bit. Ray and Jane sold the family farm to a distant relative and so he still has access to his wood shop there, but the Retirement Community also has a well equipped wood shop in the basement. Many mornings find Ray down there working on various projects and, of course, fashioning more bones.
He continues to experiment with new woods. He recently heard of a company in Wisconsin that is making lumber from logs discovered at the bottom of Lake Superior, wood that had sunk there well over 100 years ago when the virgin forests of Wisconsin were first logged and tree trunks were lashed together in huge rafts and towed down to Chicago. Lake Superior's frigid waters have preserved this wood – from forests standing long before the Declaration of Independence was signed – in impeccable condition. Ray now fashions maple, birch and pine bones from them. The wood is very close grained and beautiful and Ray says admiringly, "This is real wood. You don't often see wood like this anymore." The sound is different too, sharper and crisper than bones made from the same conventional woods.
Ray has never advertised, but word of his well-crafted bones keeps spreading. Bones players who learned from Percy are legion and when people see his fine instruments they want their own. Some of Percy's students who play music professionally, play them in their concerts, and after the shows people ask where they can buy them. There is even the principal of a nearby elementary school, himself a bones player, who every year teaches all his fifth graders how to play. He uses tongue depressors to get them started and then orders a pair of bones for each of them as a graduation gift. "Sometimes I think that interest in the bones has waned and maybe I've made my last set of bones, but then I get another big order," says Ray. "This thing just has a life of its own. I love making the bones and I'll keep doing them as long as I can."
For further information please contact Sandor by email at slomovits@hotmail.com.
