Introduction

Welcome to the Instructables eBook, DIY Musical Instruments! 

To truly understand an instrument, you should learn how it's built.  This book will not only improve your musical acumen, but help you build an entire band's worth of fun instruments.  Make them for yourself, for your kids, or for any musician who needs a unique and personal gift!

The Instructables editors have chosen some of our best do it yourself musical instrument projects to educate and inspire you to make great things with easily-available tools.

Instructables is the most popular project-sharing community on the Internet. Since August 2005, Instructables has provided easy publishing tools to enable passionate, creative people to share their most innovative projects, recipes, skills, and ideas. Instructables has over 40,000 projects covering all subjects, including crafts, art, electronics, kids, home improvement, pets, outdoors, reuse, bikes, cars, robotics, food, decorating, woodworking, costuming, games, and life in general.  

Table of Contents

Introduction

Making an Atabaque (Afro-Brazilian Conga)

Build a Bass Fiddle

Beginner Cigar Box Guitar

PVC Soprano Recorder

MINI-PIANO

Instant Thumb Piano: How to make a set screw lamellaphone

Crazy Looper

Simple Self Playing Guitar!

2 String Paddle Bass

Homemade Diddley Bow Electric Slide Guitar (a la Jack White)

Make A Guitar Pickup

Army-Navy Mandolin on the Cheap

Building Mandolin No. 002

Bullet Shell Pan Flute

Superterrific Tub Bass

Acoustic Vulcan lyre

X-ray Drum Heads

How to build a cajon

DIY Kids Sand Block Instruments

Styrofoam Harps

Styrofoam Maracas

A Rule Organ

Build Your Own Marimba and Wrap Your Own Mallets!

The Minty Kalimba

How to Make Bagpipes out of a Garbage Bag and Recorders

Author and Copyright Notices

Instructable: Making an Atabaque (Afro-Brazilian Conga)
Author: chapa-de-frente
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (by-nc-sa)

Instructable: Build a Bass Fiddle
Author: courtervideo
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (by-nc-sa)

Instructable: Beginner Cigar Box Guitar
Author: gerlindagrimes
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (by-nc-sa)

Instructable: PVC Soprano Recorder
Author: Thinkenstein
License: Attribution (by)

Instructable: MINI-PIANO
Author: mistic
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (by-nc-sa)

Instructable: Instant Thumb Piano: How to make a set screw lamellaphone
Author: yapruder
License: Attribution-NonCommercial (by-nc)

Instructable: Crazy Looper
Author: rarebeasts
License: Attribution-NonCommercial (by-nc)

Instructable: Simple Self Playing Guitar!
Author: sugarhi911
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (by-nc-sa)

Instructable: 2 String Paddle Bass
Author: st.paul
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (by-nc-sa)

Instructable: Homemade Diddley Bow Electric Slide Guitar (a la Jack White)
Author: CaptainWow
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (by-nc-sa)

Instructable: Make A Guitar Pickup
Author: Leperello Mikesiah
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (by-nc-sa)

Instructable: Army-Navy Mandolin on the Cheap
Author: andrew.spencer.2
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (by-nc-sa)

Instructable: Building Mandolin No. 002
Author: Jnkyrdguy
License: None (All Rights Reserved) (c)

Instructable: Bullet Shell Pan Flute
Author: rabidiga
License: Public Domain (pd)

Instructable: Superterrific Tub Bass
Author: jts3k
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (by-nc-sa)

Instructable: Acoustic Vulcan lyre
Author: agent036
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (by-nc-sa)

Instructable: X-ray Drum Heads
Author: Thinkenstein
License: Attribution (by)

Instructable: How to build a cajon
Author: 89joho87
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd)

Instructable: DIY Kids Sand Block Instruments
Author: yankeelandy
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (by-nc-sa)

Instructable: Styrofoam Harps
Author: Thinkenstein
License: Attribution (by)

Instructable: Styrofoam Maracas
Author: Thinkenstein
License: Attribution (by)

Instructable: A Rule Organ
Author: SteevAtBlueDust
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (by-nc-sa)

Instructable: Build Your Own Marimba and Wrap Your Own Mallets!
Author: RocketScientist
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (by-nc-sa)

Instructable: The Minty Kalimba
Author: Deansrds
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (by-nc-sa)

Instructable: How to Make Bagpipes out of a Garbage Bag and Recorders
Author: wasabi32746
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (by-nc-sa)

Disclaimer

All do-it-yourself activities involve risk, and your safety is your own responsibility, including proper use of equipment and safety gear, and determining whether you have adequate skill and experience. Some of the resources used for these projects are dangerous unless used properly and with adequate precautions, including safety gear. Some illustrative photos do not depict safety precautions or equipment, in order to show the project steps more clearly. The projects are not intended for use by children.

Many projects on Instructables are user-submitted, and appearance of a project in this format does not indicate it has been checked for safety or functionality. Use of the instructions and suggestions is at your own risk. Instructables, Inc. disclaims all responsibility for any resulting damage, injury, or expense. It is your responsibility to make sure that your activities comply with all applicable laws.

Making an Atabaque (Afro-Brazilian Conga)

Published by chapa-de-frente on August 30, 2010

Intro: Making an Atabaque (Afro-Brazilian Conga)

The Atabaque is an Afro-Brazilian conga drum that is used in the Martial Art/Dance/Game of Capoeira, and the Afro -Brazilian Religion of Candombl&eacute;. The steps provided in this instructable are for making a rope-tensioned, as opposed to a lug-tensioned drum. If you wish to bring ax&eacute; (energy) into your roda, or call upon the Orixas (protective spirits of Candombl&eacute;), this instructable will give you the information that you need to build your own Grande Atabaque! Muito Ax&eacute;!

Step 1: Gather all of your materials

Materials needed for this over all are:
100 feet of Manila rope
9 boards of Maple that are .5" thick, 8" wide, and 40" long
1 Bottle of Titebond 3 wood glue, or any other water resistant glue
1 Can of Marine Varnish, or any other wood protectant
1   1 1/2"x1 1/2"x20" Black Walnut turning square
1 22" round of Cow Rawhide http://www.djembedirect.com/store/djembe_goat_skin
2 16" inside diameter steel rings that are 1/4" thickhttp://www.africanrhythmtraders.com/html/drumrings.html
1 15.5" inside diameter ring
2 Ratcheting tie downs
1 can of black spraypaint
1 gigantic 55 gallon plastic bag
1 pot large enough to boil water for 3 hours strong
1 table saw with a blade you can angle and rip fence, or 1 large woodworkers plane
1 small plane
sand paper
wood screws
wood putty
1 large bucket or long planter trough (no holes)
1 hammer
1 screw driver

Step 2: Cutting the boards

First, take one of your boards and cut it down the middle the long way. Choose one of these thinner boards to be your template board and first stave.

In order to create a round body for the drum, the edges along the sides will need to be at an angle of 10 degrees for 18 staves, so I devised a way to get the stave cut out of the board with the bevel at the same time.

A  small distance from the top, draw the top, middle and bottom widths at 58mm, 80mm, and 22mm wide, with the distance between the top and bottom widths 1000mm (1M) and distance between the top and middle at 457mm. this will be your template 

Then get a second board and angle the saw blade to 10 degrees and placed the rip fence at a distance equal to the width of the second board away from the point of contact of the saw blade. Then line the drawn line of one side of the template board with the straight edge of the other board and tape it down with gorilla tape. Then run it through the saw, lift the tape, turn and repeat for all of the other sides of the template.

Trace the template twice on each board, next to each other with a gap between to allow the saw blade to rip the boards , and then repeat the cutting method for the template with the new staves.

Step 3: Forming the Shell

Next, for ease of forming, lay the staves side by side, wide ends together and wide ends up. Roll a lot of gorilla tape over it. A lot. Then flip the entire assembly, apply some water resistant glue to the valleys  in-between the staves that the beveled edges create, and let the splayed, narrower edges stay dry. Roll the staves into each other, and tape or wrap shut. Allow the glue to dry for double the time, a lot of moisture and heat will be used.

Unwrap the new drum flower from tape a day after it was applied.

 Set up the large boiler with water and make sure its really steaming. As its boiling, turn your attention to the shell again, and place some steel rings and/or banding around the already glued portion, securing it in place with screws. Then place the large plastic bag over the drum, and place the entire assembly over the pot, and let it steam for 3 hours.

Quickly, bend the rest of the wood together after the steaming, using either rope, or ratcheting  tie downs. Tie downs can be hooked together to help tighten the staves, and they work well, they also stay in place better, but you better be strong to do it to the end because it gets tough. Also if your tie downs or rope slip, add resistance by putting screws in its path (you can use wood glue or putty to fill that gap close to the end of construction). Let the drum dry 2 days before loosening it a bit and applying glue to the bent legs then tightening it back up. Let the glue dry for double the time to allow the glue to cure well and get strong, there is pressure built up in the legs. Trust me; the double time drying makes a difference.

Step 4: Finishing the Shell

The shell is going to be an 18 sided polygon, so you&rsquo;re going to want to plane the edges into a rounder shape, as well as planning the bearing edge of the drum into a round lip by taking away the large sharp edge, and then shaving it into a quarter round lip.

Sand the entire shell smooth, and follow your sealants instructions for use.

Step 5: Making the Stand

Take your plywood, then cut out 1 16&rdquo;x16&rdquo; panel and 2 16&rdquo;x12&rdquo; panels. Create a 3 sided box with it, using square strips of wood to join them together (by drilling into them). Find the center of the top panel and create a 10&rdquo; hole. Finish the stand with any sealants.

Step 6: Making the Pegs

Take the turning squares and cut them using any kind of saw, preferably a band saw, into wedge shapes, allowing for a flat portion to help resist breakage of the ends when hammering the pegs down.

Step 7: Heading the Atabaque

Get your hide and submerge it in room temp water for about 8 hours. During this time, get your rings and rope together. get one of your large rings and begin making loops around it like these pictures illustrate. 
Place the other large ring under the drum.

Loosely thread the rope under the bottom ring and through the top loops, and do not yet tie the ends together.
when the hide is done soaking, lay it flat on the ground and put the last ring in the middle. punch small holes around the edge (for ease of application) using a hammer and screwdriver on wood and thread small rope through it, cinching it up after you are done.
Now push the hide/ring combo through the vertical ropes on the drum and over the mouth of it. Get rid of the small rope and wiggle the skin and rings down a bit to get some room between the lip and the rings. tighten the verticals, and tie the ends together and let the skin dry un-tightened. it is normal at this point for the skin to suck into the drum as it dries, it will tighten up when the pegs are added.
After 3 days of drying, drive the pegs between the bottom ring and drum shell and tighten the skin. The atabaque is ready to be played!

Related Instructables

My atabaque construction by chapa-de-frente

How to re-skin a drum by cjkrieseSF

Tamborim Beater by drumperry

Elbow Thigh Regen ! Andre Teno by And.Teno

How To Enter the ThinkGeek Hacks Contest by Contest Robot

A simple and cheap fireman car siren. by Nemweb

Cheap Drumstick Tape and Drum Gloves by MARCOSTHOR

How to make a Vuvuzela cheap! by dom13marco

Build a Bass Fiddle

Published by courtervideo on September 26, 2010

Author Bio: courtervideo   (author's website)

45 years as a professional documentary film producer. Now using state of the art HD digital studio and equipment specializing in projects about global food security, sustainability, future of planet earth. Designed and developed many useful camera and post tools and equipment over the years, especially for film origination. Also designed and built a few homes and various construction projects as recently as 2001.

Intro: Build a Bass Fiddle

Introduction and motivation:

OK, this project might appear to push the envelope for some folks, especially those without a workshop and some machine tools, but I am putting up this Instructable mainly because it represents the belief that you should never NOT build something just because there's a big risk of failure.

After all, there are centuries of research and best practice, including highly sophisticated designs, world famous builders, critical selections of materials, glues, and finishes that go into building a fine musical instrument, and there are very exclusive guilds that carefully protect these secrets and techniques. So what in the world would any commoner in their right mind be thinking to even imagine that a good sounding, perfectly playable instrument could be designed and built by a rank -- well, lets just leave it at that.

Step 1: Design

I am attaching the actual original drawing for this bass. It is a little worse for wear. A classically trained friend with a very lovely traditional bass allowed me to carefully measure all of the critical details of his instrument. Distance from the nut to the bridge, bridge height, string spacing everywhere, fingerboard length and height, distance to and length of the tail piece, and on and on, were all carefully recorded. I figured that whatever I would end up building, it would have to feel normal to an experienced upright bass player.

The most important part of an acoustic instrument is the sound board, such as the top of a guitar. A traditional bass has a top, or sound board, constructed from a large, thick slab of spruce from one of just a few forests on the planet (which of course are running out of trees). The design of the top (and back) of the instrument are carved in such a way that the arch shape, important for strength, is shaped from the thick block of wood and given a somewhat uniform thickness -- a huge challenge but one that carves away most of the original slab. Arch-top guitars, cellos, violins, and some mandolins also are made this way. Nowadays large CNC milling machines are used by some folks to do this critical carving.

This design was based on the idea that a sound board and back could be created from a uniform thickness piece of wood that would simply be bent or curved to provide the necessary strength to support the massive downward pressure of the strings on the bridge, but at the same time have good acoustic qualities. The big job of carving would be eliminated, and much less wood would be needed.

It also seemed like a good idea to make the sound board bigger. After all, this is a bass, and a bigger sound board should help emphasize lower frequencies, right? This is the reason for the "teardrop" shape of this instrument. The music most frequently played at our house is bluegrass, so I wasn't worried about being able to bow the instrument, however it is possible even with the wide body. I do expect comments that in the construction photos it looks like a small boat.

Step 2: Materials

Finding wood for a musical instrument is a big challenge and occupies a great deal of the time and effort professional luthiers must put into their work. Woods must be properly cut, properly seasoned, and free of defects -- and certain kinds of wood are literally disappearing from the planet.

There are several sites on the web that supply spruce and various hardwoods for instrument making, but most only have materials for guitars. The International Violin Company of Baltimore MD sells wood blanks for traditional basses, but this design does not require the big thick slabs and can be fabricated with thin boards properly glued to for adequate size.

In fact, although I was able to scrounge some amazingly good wood for the project as described below, I believe if you bought some top grade 1/4 inch mahogany marine plywood, you could build this instrument without all the fuss of re-sawing, sanding and gluing that I went through. Less expensive basses are made with essentially plywood tops and backs that are formed into the arch shape when glued, but the added density from the glue reduces the resonance and ultimate sound quality.

In my case, when going WAY out on a limb with an untested project, it seemed prudent to scrounge around for materials, rather than spend a lot of money on expensive new stock.

I was looking at the end grain on a pile of old lumber when I noticed some perfectly quarter-sawn one-by-twelves. Quarter-sawn means that the way the original logs were sliced resulted in planks that have grain that runs relatively straight across (the thin way) through the board. This gives maximum strength, and is what luthiers look for in selecting stock for instrument tops, etc.

The wood was some very old, dry California Redwood that had once been shelves in a closet. Redwood is remarkably light and strong and is also used in making guitar tops as an alternate to spruce. There were a few nail holes and paint on the boards, but this was a very lucky find.

For the back, I selected a few pieces of walnut that had been found as fallen trees on a property we had years ago in NJ. I had taken the trees to a sawmill and have made several projects with this lovely wood. With careful re-sawing I had just enough walnut left to make a back. I also found some thicker cuts that I decided to use for the neck.

For the sides, I was looking for a straight-grained hardwood that I hoped would bend well. I found a thick piece of rough-sawn wood that appeared to be something quite hard, and I initially thought it might be ash or white oak. But when I started re-sawing it I detected a slight yellow-greenish color, and realized it was an old piece of locust wood that I had also scrounged from the forest floor in New Jersey. But it was very dry and passed the "thump" test with flying colors. What is the "thump" test? You hold a large, thin slice of the wood gently by one corner and thump it with your knuckle. You hope it will ring, or resonate with a nice tone, rather than just go "thud."

Step 3: Construction

My band saw will only re-saw wood up to about 8 inches, so I knew the back and front would have to be glued from four slices of wood. I intended for the top, back, and sides to all end up in the range of 1/4 to 5/16 inches thick, so I set my re-sawing guide for a thickness of just under 3/8 inch. The edges had to be perfectly square and straight for gluing, so the jointer is necessary for this step. I used a large piece of plywood covered with wax paper as a flat gluing table. For clamping, I nailed two parallel pieces of wood to the plywood just slightly wider than four pieces to be glued, with just enough space to also permit a long wedge to be tapped in on one side to apply the squeeze. I used Titebond II for all of the gluing on this project.

The neck, tuning head and integral upper support block were next to be glued up and cut out. Since I didn't know what I was doing, I left a large amount of wood on which to glue the sides and eventually the top and back. The back view shows how far the neck piece extends into the body for strength at this critical junction point. Of course, the finger board has not been made or installed on the neck yet.

The sides and bottom were re-sawn and rough sanded but left full width. I put the boards into the hot tub for about 24 hours to soften them up, and then bent them while wet using the hot pipe method. This is where you take a maybe foot-long piece of maybe two-inch iron pipe, clamp it very tight in the vise, and aim a propane torch right down the inside of the pipe. Using heavy gloves, you force a bend in the wood while rubbing it over the hot pipe, and soon the wood begins to retain the desired shape. I then clamped the pieces over curved forms until the wood was thoroughly dry again.

The next step was to glue the sides and bottom together with the neck piece. On the inside bottom view you can see that there are big gluing blocks In the bottom corners. I cut these out of thick lumber in what could be called "cross grain" fashion. This way the grain of both the sides, bottom, and gluing blocks all run the same direction, allowing all of the wood to expand and contract in the same way over the years. The same is true of the large block in the middle of the bottom that will carry the whole weight of the instrument when standing on it's peg (which was also glued-in at this time).

OK, now we get into some real home-spun goofball engineering. The top and back must be curved for strength, so the bottom and sides must be cut to give the necessary shape. These curves are well shown in the photo of the finished bottom of the instrument. These cuts could be very complicated to figure out, so the diagram called "Laser" shows how to make this shape without screwing it up. One side of a block of scrap wood is cut to the curved shape as per the drawing. A laser pointer is attached to a small try-square. The block and bass are carefully aligned, and as the square-with-laser is moved over the curved edge, the laser points to the exact line of the needed cut.

After cutting, kerfing strips need to be glued on the the front and back edges of the sides. I made my own because I only found very small ones for sale, and I wanted to start out with strips about 3/4 inch wide and deep. Making them means ripping wood (clear pine in this case) and then making saw cuts every perhaps 3/4 inch that are just deep enough to leave about 1/16 inch of wood holding the strip together. This, of course, allows the kerfing to easily follow curves. The strips must be glued on with enough material sticking up to allow for shaping them (as well as the edges themselves) to match the overall curve as needed.

Next, the top was glued on. It was cut extra large with the intention of trimming the edges later.

Since this is such an untraditional design, bracing the top to support the enormous stress from the downward push of the bridge, was a subject of considerable, um, consideration. Traditional basses do have a peg inside that attaches the front to the back, and I believed this would be very important both to help with the force of the bridge, and to transfer vibrations and make the back a big part of the acoustic resonance. On traditional basses the precise placement of the internal peg is a very big deal with respect to tone, etc. But this bass would not have the superior strength that comes from the carved arch of a normal viola and I felt something in the way of bracing would be critical.

First, to deal with the pressure directly under the feet of the bridge, I glued on two 1/4 inch thick round redwood pads. Then two ribs were installed with cuts carefully matched to the pads that run the full length of the top. Since the pressure at the center of these ribs could eventually cause them to break away from the top at the ends, blocks were added to back-up the ends of the two long ribs. I then added a redwood cross piece to support the post. The position of this piece is of course a huge guess but intended to be close enough to the bridge pads to add strength, but far enough away from the bridge location so that it does not prevent too much of the vibrations from the bridge being transferred to the top. From the ultimate sound quality POV, this was probably the most important decision to be made, and it came down to a big fat guess.

To make the post strong but light (again, so it wouldn't unnecessarily dampen the sound vibrations) I used the lightweight redwood and drilled holes to remove unnecessary material. A pad was added to help make a strong transition to the back.

After designing and cutting out the sound holes, I added some little braces because of the very weak cross grain left on the remaining wood in these areas.

Eventually everything inside was cleaned-up a bit, sanded a bit, and sealed with shellac.

For reasons unknown, after the top was glued on there was a tendency for the sides to warp outward. My solution was to instant glue four little drilled wood blocks to the edges, as seen in the photos taken just before the back was glued on. I used some fine wire to pull the sides in to the proper position. After the back was on, I was able to snip and remove the wires through the sound holes.

I turned a nice block of walnut on the lathe to support the foot peg, and made the post itself out of a very strong piece of rosewood that also had to be turned to size on the lathe. I have no idea how this piece of rosewood ended-up in my shop, and a piece of 5/8 inch maple dowel would have done just fine. I have a hand-me-down set of 5/8 inch tap and die for wood projects so I used those to make the peg screw into the bottom and thus be removable (but not adjustable).

I used a router jig to trim the edges of the top and back, and bought some wide white binding plastic from Stewart McDonald to finish the edges.

I couldn't find anything in my workshop suitable for a fingerboard and tailpiece, so I drove over to Orlando for a visit to the wood room at WoodCraft. There I selected a beautiful piece of African Lacewood, which is very hard and oily. But the millions of beautiful curly figures in the wood make it hell to work with. A trip across the jointer results in little divots where the curly grain chips out. So it needed to be cut to roughly the right shape and then sanded, which was a lot of work.

And with respect to the fingerboard, the shape is very critical. I suggest that if you are going to build one of these, find a decent traditional bass and make a series of templates of the fingerboard shape.

A bass requires machine tuning heads, and a full set can cost several hundred dollars. Here is a link for some tuners, which are in the $100 range for a set of four.

http://www.uptonbass.com/Individual-Tuning-Machines-Double-Bass/

The strings and an inexpensive "student" bow came from Shar Music.

I had a little bit of good hard dry maple lying around, so I decided to make my own bridge. I somehow made one that was a little short, and had to repeat this step.

For the nut at the top of the fingerboard, I used a few pieces of pre-shrunk type G plexiglas, which is nice and hard. A piece of bone is traditional, but the hard acrylic works fine.

Step 4: The rest of the story

By the time I had the major construction complete I decided to do a trial tune-up prior to finishing, because giving a piece this size a fine lacquer finish is a big job in itself, and if this thing was going to sound like crap or implode on stringing, I might as well know about it before getting out the spray equipment. There is a photo of the tuned-up bass leaning against my workshop door.

Amazingly, it didn't fold-up, and the sound was strong and clear. Frankly, I was shocked. I decided to proceed and ordered lacquer sealer and instrument grade gloss lacquer from Stewart McDonald.

Finishing is a big challenge in itself. I made a jig using the holes in the tuning head and a threaded dowel in the bottom peg-rest hole so that the instrument could be suspended horizontally and rotated lengthwise so all surfaces would be accessible for spraying. We were having damp, cool weather at the time, and even with retarder added I was having trouble with coats turning milky. Eventually I closed my workshop, ran a de-humidifier for a few days, and sprayed the bass while wearing a SCUBA outfit.

Since building the bass I have had two honest-to-goodness bass players try it out and their reaction has been very complementary. Another fellow, who is a recording studio engineer with lots of experience recording acoustic instruments, has given the sound quality very high marks. In any case, it makes a pretty addition in front of our living room window.

Related Instructables

Baby Bass Tootophone -- a reed instrument by Thinkenstein

Bass Demo by courtervideo

How To Play Bass - Drop D Tuning For Bass Beginners by howtoplaybassdotcom

Learn the drumming basics! by Flumpkins

Hacking Rock Band by SteevAtBlueDust

Everything about a bass: How to play, pick out, and have fun with an electric bass by heyzuphowsitgoin

how to play bass to I Can't Turn You Loose by howtoplaybassdotcom

How To Play Bass To Bring On The Night - Beginner's Bass Lesson by howtoplaybassdotcom

Beginner Cigar Box Guitar

Published by gerlindagrimes on April 18, 2010

Intro: Beginner Cigar Box Guitar

This is more of an uninstructable than an instructable, but hopefully my mistakes will benefit other beginner makers.

I&rsquo;m part of a small group of beginner makers in Atlanta, GA called AHWIG. For our most recent meeting, we decided to make cigar box guitars using Discontinuuity&rsquo;s excellent instructable. However, since none of us knew what a coping saw was, much less how to operate a power tool, we were befuddled by the instructions. This instructable that assumes the reader knows NOTHING AT ALL about making stuff.

Many thanks to Discontinuuity for inspiring a new crop of makers.

Step 1: Parts & Tools

Parts You'll Need:

Cigar Box

3' length of 1"x2" poplar board

Guitar tuning pegs (You only need 3, but they come in a set of 6.)

Guitar strings (Get a pack from any music store. Some stores even sell individual ones. You only need 3 strings.)

Bridge - part A: Something to anchor the strings at the top - anything you can drill 3 holes through. I used a small hinge which already had 3 holes, but a piece of scrap metal would also work. One of us used a tiny antique key with 3 holes in the head.

Bridge - part B:  I used a small piece of trim. Discontinuuity used a bamboo chopstick.

Something to make the nut. I used the same trim that I used on the bridge, but in retrospect, I should have used something with a thinner profile. Discontinuuity used a nail with the tip cut off.

Random chunks of wood. An old 1 1/2" thick  deck rail that is angled on one end is perfect. (deck rail = skinny piece of wood that runs vertically.)

Random hardware. The tuning pegs & hinge came with their own screws, but I needed a spare screw to attach the tailpiece.

Wood glue

Tiny hinges for your box if yours doesn't already have them. (heh, heh. I said 'box.')

Tools You'll Need:
*Note: You don't absolutely have to use power tools, but some of us had them, and we were all thoroughly over-excited about getting to use them.

1/4 sheet palm sander (You can sand by hand - but an electric sander sure saves time.) & 1/4 sheets of sandpaper in various grits

Drill

Dremel tool with sanding barrels and cutting wheels (Mine was the cheapest, cordless version. A couple of the others had fancier ones with up to 10 speed settings. This is probably the most optional of the tools. I mainly used it for sanding the f-holes.)

Clamps (2 or 3)

Chisel

Pencil

Utility Knife

 Snips (You only need these if you're working with metal for your bridge piece.)

Small keyhole saw

Ruler

Hand Saw

Image Notes
1. 1. Palm sander
2. Wood glue
3. drill
4. Dremel tool
5. Clamps
6. Keyhole saw
7. Ruler
8. Hand saw
9. Snips
10. Utility knife
11. Pencil for marking
12. Chisel

Step 2: Notch the cigar box

Your 1"x2" poplar board (the neck) needs to pass all the way through the cigar box. To make this happen, you have to cut a notch. Here's how:

Open the cigar box.

Hold the neck up to one end

Mark the width and depth

Clamp the cigar box to hold it in place (I used the hand rail on my deck as a work surface.)

Use the keyhole saw to make the 2 vertical cuts.

Use a utility knife to score the wood horizontally between the 2 vertical cuts

Use your hands to snap out the little notch of wood

Close the lid. Your guitar neck can now pass through the notch you've created.

Step 3: Chisel the neck

So, slide the neck through your brand new notch, all the way until it touches the other side of the box. Cool, right? Except, chances are, your lid won't close anymore. In order to get the box to close flush, we need to account for the thickness of the lid.

In case it's not 100% clear, your neck needs to fit all the way through your cigar box so that you can drill the bridge into the neck at the top of the box.

Measure the depth of your cigar box lid and mark it on your guitar neck.

Measure the length of your cigar box and mark it on your neck.

Saw several cuts into the top of your neck, using the guides you've just drawn.

Stick a chisel in between these cuts and apply pressure. The wood between the cuts should pop right out.

Safety tip: Always chisel AWAY from yourself

The chiseled-out surface will be lumpy and uneven, but this doesn't matter much because this part of the neck will be hidden inside your box.

Still, if you're a perfectionist like me, you can use the palm sander to smooth out the rough surface.

If your lid still doesn't close flush, sand a bit more around the edge that butts up against the notch you made earlier.

Image Notes
1. depth & length markings on the guitar neck

Image Notes
1. Use a chisel to chip out the notches

Image Notes
1. Sanding is optional

Image Notes
1. Lid still doesn't close flush, so sand a bit more.

Step 4: Cut The Sound Holes

A sound hole can be any shape you fancy. You can buy a round attachment for a drill in various diameters and simply drill a big round hole in the center of your cigar box. Or, you could just drill random holes in whatever pattern you choose.

I decided to attempt to make the same, superfly, violin-style f-holes that Discontinuuity used.

Draw the f-holes onto your cigar box lid. I freestyled it, so my f-holes ended up looking...well...hand-drawn and sloppy.

Use a utility knife to score your cigar box lid along the shapes you've drawn.

I intended to use my dremel tool with a cutting wheel to carve out the shapes, but I have a cheap cordless dremel, and the battery died. So, I kept working with the utility knife to create rough cuts of the shapes.

Image Notes
1. I freestyled my f-holes and they turned out kind of sloppy

Image Notes
1. Scoring with the utility knife.

Image Notes
1. Sand down rough cuts later

Step 5: Blocking

 I'm not sure if this step is 100% necessary, but I I wanted to make sure the neck had plenty of support, so I cut down an old fence rail to make a couple of blocks that would fit underneath the neck inside my cigar box, giving it a bit of extra support.

Open your cigar box and measure the depth from the base to the bottom of the notch you created in Step 2. Mark the fence rail.

Next, measure the width of the notch. Mark the fence rail

Use the hand saw to cut 2 chunks off the fence rail the same width as the notch.

Then, clamp each chunk and saw it to the depth you marked in #1.

Sand them smoothish.

Place the chunks at either end of the cigar box & fit the neck on top.

If the lid doesn't close flush, sand the chunks down a bit more.

Paste the bottom of the chunks with wood glue, then clamp them in place for at least 30 minutes (or whatever the instructions on your wood glue say...)

Image Notes
1. 2 Wood chunks

Image Notes
1. Blocks to support the guitar neck
2. The future tailpiece

Image Notes
1. For the record, the wood glue I bought POURED out of the bottle and made a big mess.

Step 6: Cut the Tail Piece

To give the guitar more stability, I created a tail piece using the angled end of the fence rail.

Cut a 3" piece of fence rail that includes the angled end

Then, using the same score-and-chisel method you used earlier, cut that piece down to the right depth.

This is your tail piece

Sand the edges of the angled end so that they are a bit rounded.

Fit the neck through the notch you made in step 2 so that it is sitting on top of the 2 blocks you made in step 5.

Underneath where the neck is sticking out of the notch, butt the square end of your tail piece up against the cigar box.

Mark the neck where the tail piece hits the cigar box.

Glue the tail piece to the bottom of the neck in the spot you marked.

Clamp it and let the glue dry.

Image Notes
1. Angled end of fence rail
2. Chisel out notches to reduces the depth of the tailpiece to the size you need

Image Notes
1. Tailpiece is upside down in this picture.

Step 7: While the Glue dries...

Refine the edges of your sound holes. I used a dremel tool with a small barrel sander attachment, but you could also use a file. Because I freestyled the design, my f-holes turned out kind of lopsided and sloppy looking. If you want perfection, use a stencil.

Once the glue is a little dry, you can also start sanding the edges & end of the neck. Be careful not to put too much stress on the joints. You want to round the edges off so that the guitar is easier to hold and play.

After you've permanently glued in your neck, the bridge should screw directly into the neck. I haven't attached the neck yet, but I went ahead and tacked on the bridge. I used a small 3-hole hinge.

Line up the middle hole on the bottom flap of the hinge with the center of your cigar box

Mark the 3 holes on the bottom flap of the hinge on the cigar box

Drill small holes through each of the marks

Screw in the right and left holes of the bottom flap of the hinge.

The center screw will need to pass through the neck, so wait on that one.

The top flap of the hinge doesn't get screwed in. You tie your strings through the 3 holes.

Image Notes
1. left & right screws on bottom flap of hinge are tacked in. Top flap doesn't get screwed in.
2. Sanding the f-holes with the dremel tool

Image Notes
1. Screw the bottom flap of the hinge into the backstide of the cigar box, but don't fasten the middle screw yet. The top flap anchors the 3 guitar strings.

Step 8: Tuning Pegs & Tragic Errors

Create the headstock (ie: shape at the end of your neck that will hold the tuning pegs.) I decided to just leave the board as is, but your headstock could be any shape big enough to house the pegs. An example. And another. And one more.

mark 3 places for the tuning pegs about 1 1/2 inches apart on the headstock

Drill holes for the tuning pegs to pass through

The pegs I bought came with little metal "sleeves" that fit down in the holes on the top side of the guitar.

I made a mistake: The sleeves were wider than the tuning pegs, so I kept drilling larger and larger holes until the sleeves fit. This was probably a mistake. Maybe you are supposed to hammer in the sleeves like grommets?

I made an even bigger mistake: I drilled my tuning pegs in a straight line. You should angle them a little. Otherwise, all 3 strings will bunch up at the middle of the nut, like mine did.

Oh well, carry on.

Pass the tuning pegs through the drill holes, then screw them into the underside of the neck.

Image Notes
1. Or else, drilled the holes differently. This one should be here...
2. And this one should be here...
3. I should have angled the headstock...

Image Notes
1. Pesky sleeves (those round washer-looking things at the base of the pegs.)

Image Notes
1. I actually glued the sleeves into place. They will probably fall out in the future.

Image Notes
1. Tuning pegs screwed in to the underside of the neck.

Image Notes
1. Strings bunched up at the nut b/c tuning pegs are all in a straight line.

Step 9: Glue & Screw

This is the big moment, where everything comes together.

Screw the tailpiece to the neck with a long screw. (Yes, it's already glued, so maybe this is overkill, but whatever - if you're reading this, you are a novice like me and can probably stand to screw in something else, just for practice.)

Put some glue on the pieces of the neck that will rest on the blocks.

Lay the neck on top of the blocks and clamp it into place until the glue dries.

Once the glue is dry (at least 30 minutes), you can screw in the middle screw of the bridge.

My cigar box didn't have a latch, so I also bought a couple small 2-hole hinges (maybe 2"?) so that I could screw my lid shut. You could also staple it shut, or use some sort of latch so that it isn't permanently closed.

Image Notes
1. Long screw to connect tail piece to neck.

Image Notes
1. Tail screwed (heh heh)

Image Notes
1. Neck, glued in.

Image Notes
1. Screwing the bridge to the neck

Image Notes
1. Small hinges to screw the lid shut
2. Small hinges to screw the cigar box shut

Step 10: The Nut and the Bridge

The Bridge
If you have no clue what a "bridge" is, look at this picture . For cigar box guitar purposes, it consists of 2 parts:

The part that anchors the strings (in the bridge pictured here, there are little black pegs holding the strings in place.) I used a 3" hinge.

The part the strings pass over (in this picture, it's that thin white line.) I used a small piece of trim.

To anchor my strings, I used a 3" hinge predrilled with 3 holes. For the other part of the bridge, I used a 2.5" piece of trim - similar to quarter round, but it had a 90 degree angle on one side and the other side was curved.

I carved notches in the trim piece for the strings to fit through. The notches should be in line with the holes in the hinge.

The strings tie through the holes in the hinge. Technically, the other piece of the bridge doesn't even need to be glued in because the string tension is supposed to hold it in place. But I glued mine in anyway.

The Nut
Here's a diagram of an acoustic guitar. The nut is on the neck, near the tuning pegs.

I used the same type of trim for my nut as I used for my bridge. This was a mistake. But - the nut is supposed to have a low profile..probably not even a 1/4" off the fretboard. My nut was way too tall, which holds the strings really high off the fretboard.(ie: the "action" is really high.) A high action is good for slide guitar, or even for bowing with a violin bow, so maybe I'll try that before I replace my nut with something thinner.

Discontinuuity used a nail with the end cut off as his nut, which seems to have worked out great.

Attaching the bridge & the nut
Just glue them into place!

Image Notes
1. Cutting a piece of trim for the bridge and nut.

Image Notes
1. Scoring the bridge for the strings

Image Notes
1. Gluing the bridge

Image Notes
1. Gluing the nut to the neck...GRRR, stupid tuning pegs all in a line! Must angle them...

Step 11: The Strings & Finishing Touches

So, now your cigar box guitar is basically built. You just have to add the strings. How you'll attach them will depend on what sort of materials you used to make your bridge. In my case, I just tied them through the 3 holes on my hinge with a simple loop.

This site has a free video that shows you how to wrap them around the tuning pegs. It's simple, but hard to describe with words.

Finishing Touches and Final Thoughts

I didn't stain or mark frets on my guitar neck, but by all means do both of these things if you really want to do the job properly. Since this was a first attempt, I didn't want to go to all of that trouble until I was sure the whole thing was going to work out.

I need to fix some of my mistakes before my guitar will be truly playable. Most notably, I need to reposition the tuning heads at an angle. Then I also need to sand down my nut or use something different for that part. The bridge might be a little high too.

It took me most of a Sunday to finish this project and write this instructable. I'm a little peeved at not ending up with a workable instrument, but it's getting dark outside, so I guess I'll have to fix my mistakes some other weekend. Hopefully YOU, by now, having avoided my mistakes, will be rocking out on a fully playable cigar box guitar.

Image Notes
1. Tie the strings to the bridge

Related Instructables

My Cigar Box Guitar (with cigar box amp) by tashiandmo

My Home-made Cigar Box Guitar by bumpus

Cigar Box Guitar by discontinuuity

My First Box Guitar by jackbrass

Battery-Powered Cigar Box Guitar Amp by benjaminmailloux

Cigar box sitar (tamboura) by dingolishious

How to read guitar tabs: for Beginners by tecwriting

The Process of Building a Cigar Box Guitar Amp - Little Gem or The $5 Crackerbox Amp by tech-tut

PVC Soprano Recorder

Published by Thinkenstein on October 23, 2010

Author Bio: Thinkenstein   (author's website)

I'm a refugee from Los Angeles, living in backwoods Puerto Rico for about 35 years now and loving it. I built my own home from discarded nylon fishnet and cement.

Intro: PVC Soprano Recorder

Recorders are fairly easy to play; much easier than side-blown flutes.   They are relatively cheap instruments to buy, but if you want some DIY fun, here's how to make one out of PVC pipe. 

To hear how it sounds, listen to the .mp3 audio file in the last step. 

Step 1: The Parts of the Recorder

The recorder is composed of three parts; the mouthpiece, the body with the fingering holes, and the standard connector which joins the mouthpiece and the body. 

The spacing and size of the holes in the body are copied from a store-bought plastic recorder. 

The mouthpiece is composed of concentric layers of different size pipe.  The pipe diameters are:  1/2" CPVC (smallest diameter used for hot water),  1/2" PVC (the layer around it with a section removed to create an air channel), and 3/4" PVC (to cap the top of the air channel).

The air channel conducts the air you blow to a sounding hole.   A wedge shape at the hole interrupts the air flow and creates vibration and sound. 

The fingering holes in the body modify the pitch of the sound by creating different amounts of resistance to the air passing through the pipe.  Opening all the holes lets air escape with less resistance by the easiest route, through the first holes.   Closing all the holes creates a longer column of air inside the body, and more resistance, which results in lower notes.   

Step 2: The Mouthpiece

PVC pipe comes with a variety of wall thicknesses.  Schedule 40 is common, and is what I used.  The 1/2" CPVC doesn't quite fit inside the 1/2" PVC, and the 1/2" PVC doesn't quite fit inside the 3/4" PVC.  By sawing a slit down one side of the pipe, it can spring open and fit tightly on the next size pipe down. 

My mouthpiece parts fit so tightly that no glue was needed. 

I cut the 1/2" PVC channel and put it in place to mark the size of the rectangular sounding hole.  Then I removed the 1/2" PVC, drilled the hole, and touched it up with an X-acto crafts knife.  You need a narrow and sharp blade to get in the hole and carve out the wedge-shaped edge of the hole. 

I put the wooden dowel plug right up to the start of the sounding hole.  Setting it further back toward the mouth changes the pitch and allows some tuning.  I used a metal drift pin and a hammer to set the plug inside the pipe. 

Image Notes
1. Rectangular sounding hole.
2. 1/2" diameter CPVC. 2 1/2" from sounding hole to this end of the pipe. Leave the other end long. You will trim it later.
3. 1/2" PVC, 3 1/4" long, with a strip cut out to create the air channel.
4. 3/4" PVC, 2 1/2" long, with a slit cut on one side with a saw. The slit allows for expansion and goes on the side opposite the air channel. This layer covers the top of the air channel.
5. 1/2" diameter wooden dowel, which fits tightly inside the 1/2" CPVC pipe. An approximately 1" long section of the dowel will be cut off and used as a plug inside the mouthpiece.

Image Notes
1. This is the strip cut out of the 1/2" PVC to make the air channel.

Image Notes
1. Starting to place the 1/2" PVC over the 1/2" CPVC

Image Notes
1. The mouthpiece is held in a vise. Two saw cuts are made to begin the forming.
2. This is a pipe holding vise adapter I made, not part of the mouthpiece.

Image Notes
1. A half-round file was used to shape the curve. The rest of the shaping was done with an X-acto knife, and other files. Shape it to fit your mouth, without any air leaks.

Step 3: Finger Hole Size and Spacing

Use a piece of 1/2" CPVC for the body.  Cut it about 12" long.  You will trim some off the mouthpiece end later. 

FINGER HOLE SPACING:

The distances between holes are copied from a soprano recorder.    The holes are not all placed on the center line down the pipe.  Since some fingers are longer than others, the holes have a little sideways displacement to increase comfort while playing.  When penciling hole locations, hold the pipe as you would while playing it to find and mark a comfortable side displacement for each finger hole.

There are seven finger holes and one hole for the thumb on the opposite side of the body -- the same as on a recorder. 

On a recorder, double holes at #6 and #7 help get half tones.  I elongate my holes and just half-close them when needed.

Step 4: Shaping the Finger Holes

After drilling the appropriately sized holes, I use some sandpaper wrapped around a piece of 5/8" wooden dowel material to modify the hole.  That makes it easier to seal the hole with one's finger, reducing unwanted squawking sounds.

In the raw hole, there is a pocket of air inside the hole underneath the finger.  I like to bring the finger down a little lower, thus reducing the pocket of air and turbulence inside the tootophone body.  It probably results in a cleaner sound. 

I made a special tool to get inside the drilled finger holes and scrape the burrs from inside of the tootophone body.  (A tiny knife with a bent end, made of stainless steel welding rod.)  That, too, reduces turbulence and makes the instrument easier to play. 

Step 5: Trimming the Mouthpiece and Body

The distance from the sounding hole on my store-bought recorder to the #1 hole (See step 3 for hole numbering) is about 4 inches.   I didn't want the connector piece, which is raised up some above the surface of the 1/2" CPVC to create a step that would interfere with air flow around the sounding hole.  For that reason, it is better not to have the connector located too close to the sounding hole. 

I cut the mouthpiece 2 1/4" from the sounding hole.  I cut the body 1 3/4" from the #1 hole.  No science involved there.  I just eyeballed it. 

Step 6: Hear the Recorder

To hear how the recorder sounds, click on the .mp3 audio file thumbnail icon below.  It looks like a piece of paper with the corner folded over. 

COLONIAL ERA TUNE.mp3298 KB

Related Instructables

pvc "TOOTOPHONE" -- a musical reed instrument by Thinkenstein

PVC Recorder by howtern

Buying your first Ocarina by awatson2006

MICROPHONE HAT -- hands-free recording by Thinkenstein

How to Make Bagpipes out of a Garbage Bag and Recorders by wasabi32746

MUSICAL SCULPTURE -- "The Secretary's Nightmare" by Thinkenstein

Hypotooter -- a mini-musical instrument by Thinkenstein

SUGRU Slide Whistle by Thinkenstein

MINI-PIANO

Published by mistic on November 5, 2009

Author Bio: mistic   (author's website)

A retired electronics engineer -motorola. delveing into new craft ideas and contest entries.

Intro: MINI-PIANO

iNTRO- HOW TO MAKE A MINIATURE INSTRUMENT PLAYED LIKE  A PIANO.

    This Instructable illustrates the steps in making a stringed instrument to which piano keys are added and played like a piano over 2 octaves. This Instructable  is based on my earlier Instructable on making a mini-zither {posted Aug.5, 2009. but adds keys.

aKMiniPiano9-30-09 019.MOV9 MB

Image Notes
1. card board to show sharps and notes. Actual sharps are generated at the top of the strings with a finger pressed against the string.
2. block of Urethane as a key stop under keys. glue in place.
3. Plastic clear cover.
4. tuning mechanism- Lift the key before attempting to tune the notes.
5. press here for a sharp note.

Step 1: MATERIALS-Preliminary instructions

This step will describe the device . I initially made a stringed instrument  I called a zither in my earlier Instructable titled "how to make a mini-zither of 2 octaves " Please refer to it for basics of using elastic poly-string materials and tuning . However, I included another resonating box construction that is of a smaller dimension for this piano project. After making the assembly, stringing, tuning, etc. the final step is to add piano-like keys which I have outlined in my Lab-Book pages here for ease of assembly.
   A little input here is required. A true piano has keys that strike the wire strings . I have deviated from this mechanism by inventing a different method of sounding the string note. It entails a novel method of grabbing the string with an adhesive pad that then pulls the string up , releases it to sound a note.The adhesive I have chosen is Uglu (r) by Mactac {www.ugluit.com} .Packages for  a dollar  are available from craft stores.
Packages  contain enough adhesive strips for several instruments. Other adhesive tapes (two-sided) can be used as Scotch[R] mounting adhesive or Foam- tapes  for mounting pictures on a wall.
      Lifting arm- Use coffee-stirring sticks of wood.See details in note book.
      Tubing - again I found stir sticks of plastic would work that a coat-hanger wire would feed in-to. Wire is used as an axle for the keys to rotate on.
       Gluing the wood sticks to the tubes is done with paste type adhesives as two part epoxy. {Eclectic Products  Super-mend epoxy.}
       Keys- Use vertically mounted wood sticks  glue to end.
       Weights- used for application of downward force to the glue tipped wood sticks onto the strings.I found Plumbers solder to be easily formed to correct weight. I experimented with wire springs  and found them hard to set correct down pressure.
       Overall covering- any plastic and cardboard to locate the keys  as in a piano.

Image Notes
1. Keys- Solder weight are glued to the sticks over the adhesive tips. 4 turns of 1.5 in. long solder is sufficient weight.
2. plastic tubes cut 1/2 in long and glued to the sticks.The tubes are placed over the long axis coat hanger wire.
3. keys of wood. can be rubber silicone coated for ease of pushing down.

Image Notes
1. showing adhesive formed over end of sticks.
2. examples of adhesive mounting to wood sticks.

Step 2: SOUNDING BOX

USED A CIGAR BOX AS A RESONATOR.IT GAVE A LOUD ,CLEAR NOTE SOUNDING .

A hole was drilled in one side about 1 inch diameter. With this I could place a wireless Mike and get a very loud musical sound. I used a Hanna Montana  mike for $6.00 .
     To repair-  Remove the wire axle carefully  from one end and lift off the key that needs repair.

Step 3: ASSEMBLY OF KEYS

Assembly of keys and  adhesive tapes.

1-layout  of sticks for each note.
     Apply a square of tape to ends of all sticks
    lay sticks side-by-side  so they are spaced  1/2 inch apart , with one end  with adhesive  touches a string. Apply a strip of  scotch clear tape over the sticks on the arrangment outlined.Carfully remove the assembly of sticks  and lay  on a flat surface.Dont let the adhesive stick tips touch anything.
2- Assembly of sticks to the plastic tubing-  lay tubing across sticks and apply glue under each stick and over the tubing .
3-sepparting  sticks- Use Exacto blade and cut beteen each stick. Run  the coat-hanger wire through the tubes after the assembly is placed into mounting rsonator.
4-Weights are added-Cut to length and fold 3 times and glue to ends of sticks.
5- Keys. cut some sticks and mount  sideways  with Goop adhesives.

Image Notes
1. stick assembly- layout on resonator cross-mount . Apply adhesive tape across sticks and lift assembly to a table top.

Step 4: COMPLETION

Complete the assembly- This  box design uses  cross bars that support the  the wire  axle.
        Test the sticks and adhesion to the strings.It should be a sharp release note that sounds for 2 seconds until the key is released and  is now non-vibrating state. Use a block of Poly foam[urethane] to stop the down word travel of the keys.  see note book pages and pictures..
Add a piece of card board above the keys and mark the sharps notes locations.

THIS COMPLETES THE PIANO ASSEMBLY-- HAVE FUN PLAYING. [Let me know  of  any problems.

Image Notes
1. card board to show sharps and notes. Actual sharps are generated at the top of the strings with a finger pressed against the string.
2. block of Urethane as a key stop under keys. glue in place.
3. Plastic clear cover.
4. tuning mechanism- Lift the key before attempting to tune the notes.
5. press here for a sharp note.

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LAP PIANO by mistic

How to play the piano by schnuckel

HOW TO MAKE A MINI-UKULELE [MINI-UK] by mistic

Improve at sight-reading by jackbobpin

Instant Thumb Piano: How to make a set screw lamellaphone by yapruder

Other uses for Rock Band instruments by SanjayMaru1994

How to Build a Luzboard (Electronic Instrument) by VictoriaAW

Instant Thumb Piano: How to make a set screw lamellaphone

Published by yapruder on August 26, 2007

Author Bio: yapruder

RP Collier artist, musician

Intro: Instant Thumb Piano: How to make a set screw lamellaphone

This is a method to quickly and easily make a musical instrument capable of melodic percussion and noise experimentation.

The thumb piano, known as a kalimba or mbira and by many other names, is a lamellaphone that uses plucked prongs called tongues, keys or tines to generate acoustic vibrations. The length of the tine determines the pitch.

Generally, the thumb piano uses some kind of mechanism to create a great deal of pressure to anchor the tines across 2 bridges which allows the free lengths of the tines room to vibrate. The tines are usually of the same material and gauge (thickness) to ensure consistency so the pressure is distributed equally holding everything in place and in tune.

The method shown here is simplified and wonderfully versatile. It allows the use of more fragile, delicate, and unusual materials for the body of the instrument, and it provides a way to use oddly shaped tines of different materials at the same time while permitting the tines to be swapped out and tuned with ease.

There are interesting possibilities here: a simple armature or jig that becomes a tool with which to investigate the sound that different materials make - how they vibrate, how they resonate and how different combinations of factors can change the sound quality.

Experiment and explore and find configurations that work for you.

More photos:
Flickr set

Video link in Step 6.

Image Notes
1. Described in Step 8 ---- Thumb Piano by RP Collier

Step 1: The Grounding Bar

The grounding bar is an item used by electricians to ground house circuit wires. It comes in a variety of lengths and can be found in the electrical section of most local hardware stores or builder/contractor supply centers.
The bar shown is about 4 1/2 inches long and 1/2 inch in width.
The 3 empty slots are drilled all the way through, this is where fasteners can be used to attach the bar to something.

Step 2: Fasten the grounding bar to a surface

All you need to do is make 3 holes with a hand drill into the surface you want to become the body of the instrument.
The screws shown in the photo are hex head 10-32 machine screws. They are used in the thumb piano shown in Step 9 by using a tap to thread the holes. Otherwise, these need washers and nuts to tighten for anchoring the grounding bar, or instead of washers, some kind of plate for the nut to press against. Smaller and different types of machine screws could be used adding washers and maybe lock washers as needed.

If you are going to mount the bar on wood or thin metal like a tin can, then you may only need a hammer and nail to make the 3 holes.

With wood, just use wood screws or something similar. Nails alone might possibly do the job with a bit of wood glue - start the holes with a nail, add a bit of glue to the holes before driving them firmly.

Heavy duty epoxy, riveting, welding or even slotting a surface with a milling machine or router are some other ways to anchor the bar.

Step 3: Shims might be necessary

The tines need room to vibrate, so depending on the type of surface chosen and the way the bar is mounted, it may be necessary to lift the grounding bar up off the instrument body using a shim. This just requires 3 more holes using the grounding bar as template.

The photo shows a steel bar and a wood square dowel for shims. Plastic, clay, bondo, rock hard water putty or other materials could be used.

The shims in the photo are trimmed and clean but they could be made of scraps, rough and irregular of edge, as long as the thickness is consistent.

Metal tines can be bent away from the instrument to give more vibration room (action), the more action the easier it will be to play.

Later steps show examples where no shims are needed.

Step 4: The grounding bar open on a shim

The grounding bar provides a set screw method to hold tines.
The photo shows the bar on a shim with the screw slots opened.
You need a regular flat blade standard tip screwdriver or a driver with a Robertson bit.

Step 5: Adding a tine

Inserting a tine.
The tine can be anything that will vibrate and can fit the hole.
This photo shows a blue tempered spring steel tine.

Crank the screw down tight to anchor the tine.
This grounding bar can hold 12 tines.

Step 6: Body and Tine

The grounding bar mounted on a small wood crate from a thrift store.
This demonstrates what is great about this method - you can use tines with a variety of shapes, sizes and materials at the same time.

Tines shown in the photo below the video from left to right:
blue tempered spring steel
hairpin
street sweeper bristle
unknown steel lattice debris
electrician's snake
knitting needle
street sweeper bristle
bicycle spoke
spring steel
umbrella rib
plastic hobby/craft brush
plain steel wire - the end splayed by hammering

There is a video of this thumb piano being played.

Very roughly tuned and I used a guitar tuner pickup to run signal into a delay and guitar amp. Normally I would put the pickup closer to the bar but I was using a rubber band to hold it in place so where I placed it suited the size of the rubber band. The audio is just what the little point & shoot camera microphone was able to catch.

Image Notes
1. thumb piano by RP Collier

Step 7: No shim needed

By using something for the body with a lip or edge, like a wood box or desk drawer, the tines are free to vibrate over the receptacle so a shim is not necessary.

Image Notes
1. thumb piano by RP Collier

Step 8: Cigar box lid

The inside of a cigar box lid can provide a shallow receptacle that fits well in the hands. Again, no shim necessary.

The tines shown in the photo are bamboo teriyaki skewers.

Image Notes
1. Described in Step 8 ---- Thumb Piano by RP Collier

Image Notes
1. thumb piano by RP Collier

Step 9: Other Emphases

This is an example of the grounding bar used on unusual materials but in a conventional way.
The tines are spring steel and uniform across the span.

The body is aluminum, a 3/4 inch thick block, and there is an aluminum shim.

I wanted to make something sleek that looks machined but I really just used a cheap, much abused drill press. I used a tap to thread the anchor screw holes, putting the tap in the drill press and turning the chuck by hand.

Surprisingly, the thing is so heavy that a hollow door on sawhorses makes a good resonator for the instrument.

Image Notes
1. thumb piano by RP Collier

Step 10: TRY THINGS

Here is a conceptual conglomerate.
The photo near the bottom of the page shows a zither from a thrift store mounted with the grounding bar kalimba which holds uniform spring steel tines. The bar is sitting on a steel shim and the tines are slightly bent to get above the zither strings.

Example of instrument using plastic swizzle sticks for tines

New 2008 all thumb piano audio album:
Lamellaphone - http://cdbaby.com/cd/rpcollier4
http://www.doncampau.com/lw2007.htm

For more of my thumb piano experiments:
thumb pianos by RP Collier

thumb piano demos:
faux fur demo
chopping block lamellaphone
more mostly thumb piano videos:
videos by RP Collier

Example for tapping, scraping and bowing:

Greg Bossert of Suddensound.com also provides a great example of using mallets or drumsticks to tap long tines in the grounding bar which results in good bass tones:
http://www.suddensound.com/workshop/hammeredkalimba.html
Check out the sound sample:
http://www.suddensound.com/workshop/samples/hammeredkalimba.mp3

Image Notes
1. thumb piano concept by RP Collier

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Crazy Looper

Published by rarebeasts on June 18, 2010

Author Bio: rarebeasts   (author's website)

I run a small electronics design lab in Canberra, Australia. We build a range of electronic goods, but we are mostly focused on hand held electronic musical instruments.

Intro: Crazy Looper

The Crazy Looper is a small hand held device that allows you to create real-time noise loops with a fast modulation metallic effect. It's a simple microcontroller project that I give an easy to build rating.

If you want one that is ready to play, you can buy one here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/43908950/crazy-looper

These instructions will give you all the info you need to build a crazy looper, Schematic, software file etc. I got the circuit board made but you can easily use vero board because it's such a simple circuit. 

Step 1:

PARTS

1 x 100nF Capacitor  (C5)
1x  10nF Capacitor   (C6)

2x  10k Pot(spline shaft)  (VR1 VR2)
2x  10K Resistor (1/4W)  (R2 R4)
4x  1K Resistor (1/4W)  (R6 R7 R8 R10)

1x  Regulator 78L05 (5V)  (IC3)
1x  Ic Holder 8Pin  
1x  Picaxe 08M  (IC2)
1x  3.5mm Socket(stereo switched) (SPKR) 
2x  LED (RED)  (LED1 LED2)
2x  Knob (Grey) 
1x  Battery Holder(9v) 
1x  Circuit board 
1x  LDR(10M)  (SW1)

If you don't have a picaxe programmer or programming cable you will need to get on try SPARKFUN

Step 2: Resistors and Wire link

*Solder the 4 1K(R5 R7 R8 R10) and the 2 10K(R2 R4) resistors to the PCB.
*Solder in the wire link at S2.

Step 3: IC socket

Solder the 8pin IC socket to the PCB

Step 4: Audio connector

Solder the 3.5mm audio connector to the PCB.

Step 5: Capacitors

Solder the capacitors(C5 C6) to the PCB. 

Step 6: LDR

Solder the LDR to the PCB. Make the LDR sit about 8-10mm from the PCB.

Step 7: LEDs

Solder the LEDs(LED1 LED2) to the PCB. 

Step 8: Voltage Regulator

Solder the voltage regulator(IC3) to the PCB.

Step 9: Variable Resistors

Fit the 10k variable resistors VR1 and VR2 to the PCB.

Step 10: 9 Volt battery clip

Solder the 9 Volt battery clip to the PCB.
*(optional) At this stage you can add some hot glue to the spot where the leads attach to PCB to stop the wires from breaking.

Step 11:

Fit the two knobs to the variable resistors.

Step 12: Program the Micro

Now we need to program the Picaxe micro-controller.
The basic program file is attached below and the programming editor for the picaxe can be downloaded for free at the revolution education website. Here : http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/picaxe/

You have two hardware options here, you can use a programmer like this Sparkfun or build the programmer into your circuit. If you build the programmer into the circuit the crazy looper becomes the programmer. I have included the circuit for both in step 14.

*Open the Picaxe programming editor and load the file "crazy looper 2010_04_16 v1_21.
* Connect the computer to the programmer via the programming cable. 
* Fit the picaxe 08m to the programmer.
* Run the programmer by pressing F5.
*You should see a progress bar and then a dialog box, that says the programming has been successful.

CRAZYLOOPERsoftware.BAS.zip806 bytes

CRAZY LOOPER 2010_04_16 V1_21.BAS1 KB

Step 13: Fit the Picaxe

Fit the Picaxe 08m(IC2) to the PCB.

Step 14: Crazy Looper Schematic

I have included two schematics, one is the circuit without a programming port and one includes a programming port.

crazy_Looper.pdf(842x595) 15 KB

crazy_Looper With_programmer.pdf(842x595) 13 KB

Crazy looper eagle files.zip26 KB

Step 15: How To Use

The Crazy Looper builds up sound loops using three controls,tempo, sound and write.

The sound control adjusts the frequency of the tone in the second half of the dial and the level of noise in the first half of the dial, giving two distinct sounds. The first half of the sounds have some spots that are blank to cut the sound up as you move the control up and down.

The second control is Tempo, which controls how fast the loop is played. Write the loop at a slow tempo then speed it up for a great effect.

The third control is the write LDR, when you put your finger over the light sensor it writes a sound to memory, which is then replayed next time the loop cycle starts. With the sound control knob adjusted clockwise, you can add a rest to the loop by pressing the Write button.

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Simple Self Playing Guitar!

Published by sugarhi911 on March 21, 2010

Intro: Simple Self Playing Guitar!

Ok so I'm going to be explaining to you how to make a self playing guitar. Ive seen a few videos on youtube and other places with them that are like incredably complex and impossible for the normal person to make. So this one can easily be done in an afternoon if you have the parts. This is my first instructable so dont be to mean.

Step 1: Parts

Okay so there are not too mny parts youll need for this.

Hot glue gun
hot glue
Old guitar Neck (or peice of wood)
guitar strings
tuning pegs
Typewritter
screw driver

Step 2: Assembling the guitar portion Part 1

Okay this is the hardest part of the whole project. What you will need to do is first find an electric project guitar you are willing to take apart (dont panic if you dont have one keep reading) all you will need from it is the neck fretboard, strings, and tuning pegs. Ill post a pic of the project guitar i used. Now disasemble the neck from the guitar. There should be four screws on the back side. *first make sure youve taken off the strings. Next you are going to want to look at your 6 strings and make sure they have a little ball at the end of them. Next you will need to drill 6 holes at the bottom of the guitar neck. Like the very bottom. So 6 holes in a line at the bottom.

Step 3: Assembling the guitar portion Part 1

Once youve drilled the holes stick the strings through in the correct order and attach the to the tuning pegs. Next you are going to want to make a bridge. as you see in the picture i just used a long screw it wors fine. YAY you have the guitar part done!

Step 4: Typewriter

The next step is to get an electric typewriter. On each of the things that fly up when you hit a letter you need to put a small drop of hot glue. If you dont know what im talking about look at the picture.

Step 5: Final Step!

Ok now put your guitar portion on the typewriter where the things the come up when you hit the letters hit the frets. If you want you can attach the neck to the rolley thing on the back to be able to play differant strings. it makes a surprisingly lound and nice sounding noise when you hit it. With mine i took the cover of the typwriter off and took the keys off to make it look more retrofuteristic steampunkish.

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2 String Paddle Bass

Published by st.paul on August 1, 2009

Intro: 2 String Paddle Bass

This bass is made from a wooden boat paddle, a piezo buzzer, weed eater strings and a few other odds and ends. For what it is and how little it costs (20-25 dollars with all new parts), the quality of sound is unbelievable. If you're thinking about taking up bass or already do and just want to have something different, this definitely would be worth making.

Here is a rough (aka bad) video to demonstrate how it sounds with no effects:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieT9CX5Z6sk

Also, here are some references and inspiration:

http://sawdustandsolder.googlepages.com/twostringfretlessbass

http://www.instructables.com/id/Electric-Stick-Bass/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dShY08_0q90

http://tbeamguitar.blogspot.com/

Image Notes
1. 1 string prototype
2. finished product

Step 1: Materials

42" paddle
machine heads
metal casing from hanging work light
1" piezo buzzer
1/4" jack
thick felt with adhesive back
two different gauge weed eater strings (I used .65 and .80 that I tuned to E and B)
various nails and screws
a pencil split down the middle

As far as the paddle goes, I used a SeaSense from Wal-Mart, but I'd suggest to try to get one from a sporting or camping store mainly because mine seems flimsier than others of the same brand but from another store.

Also, the machine heads can be either for a bass or guitar; a guitar machine head can hold a piece of .80 weed eater string with no problem.

Image Notes
1. back of new paddle

Step 2: Drilling and Stringing

First things first, decide the scale length you want your bass to be (it probably shouldn't be under 30"). Next, measure that length from where the shaft starts tapering near the handle, because that is where the nut will be. An inch and a half behind the desired length, drill two small holes less than a half inch apart in the middle of the flat section of the paddle.

My scale is 32" but in the beginning I wanted 36". That didn't work for me because there were dead spots that won't make sounds for some reason. So I have holes drilled 5 inches behind were my piezo is, but it still works fine.

Now it's time to put in the machine heads. Find an appropriate size drill bit and start in the flat part of the handle. This isn't an exact science, just make sure the holes allow you to turn the key of the tuner and that both machine heads are pretty symmetrical looking. Once that's done, just screw them in.

Tie your strings into tight knots and send the untied end through the holes, over the split pencil/future nut and keep them loosely in place by only turning the machines once or twice.

Image Notes
1. top half of a broken pencil

Image Notes
1. just there to hold up the strings for the time being

Step 3: Finishing the Headstock

Trim down the pencil so it doesn't hang off the sides. If the strings are too close to the sides for you liking (which they probably will be) then put a screw into the handle on the outer sides of them. You may want to do this anyway because it seemed to work better for me than trying to cut slits into the pencil.

Step 4: Making the Piezo Pickup

you can either buy a piezo buzzer from somewhere like Radio Shack or take one from an small electric appliance, like an alarm clock. I bought a piezo and removed the black plastic cover so I could get to the good stuff.

Next, get that thick felt stuff (like the kind you put on the bottom of furniture) and cut two pieces to around 2" wide and 1" tall. Sandwich the piezo in the middle of the felt (metal side up) and place the front of the pickup at the end of the scale length and put two small nails on both sides to hold in place.

To check if it's working, just twist the wires around the connections on the jack (polarity doesn't matter) and if it's working and making sound, disconnect the piezo so you can put the cover on that holds the jack.

i have to give credit to the guy who made this:

http://sawdustandsolder.googlepages.com/fittingapiezopickup

Without this felt idea, this would be a screeching/popping mess. Trust me, I tried.

Image Notes
1. piezo

Step 5: Body Work

The work light casting will cover the pick up and provide a simple place to put the jack. You can buy the metal part by itself for about 3 or 4 dollars. Use the pre-made hole closest to the pick up to drill large enough to place the jack. Flatten out the extended parts (check the picture) so the casting can cover the strings without touching them. Now, just use some random screws to hold it down, two in the flattened part and one on the top toward the back in another pre-made hole.

For a strap button on the body, I used a roofing nail (be careful- don't split the wood if you do this) I had a hundred of laying around. For the one on the neck, I put a big headed screw where it felt right for the bass to hang and not be too in the way.

Image Notes
1. 1/4" jack
2. strap button/ roofing nail
3. flattened
4. there's a screw back here

Step 6: Finished and Other Ideas

Now all you need to do is tune it up and plug it in!

But if you'd like to draw in some frets or even put some in (ambitious!) here's a good fret calculator.

http://www.stewmac.com/FretCalculator/

If you can't stop at just frets, make a fret board. My bass still has a spot under the E string that won't make a decent sound (I think there may be a knot under it or something). A strip of 3/4" wide wood or metal glued on or flat screwed down seems good in theory, but I haven't tried anything yet.

Heck, why do you even need two strings? Just put one on!

If you're a fan of upright basses, I've been thinking that someone could rig a fix topped guitar stand to hold one of these- that would be interesting.

Also, you could drill the string holes at the top of the handle and the machine heads at the bottom for more of a headless look and better balance (although the regular way has a good balance anyway).

Well, have fun and good luck with your new bass!

Image Notes
1. 1 string prototype
2. finished product

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Homemade Diddley Bow Electric Slide Guitar (a la Jack White)

Published by CaptainWow on June 18, 2009

Intro: Homemade Diddley Bow Electric Slide Guitar (a la Jack White)

This is possibly the cheapest and easiest guitar you could ever hope to make. There are some similar guitars in other tutorials, but in my opinion this trumps them for ghetto factor. If you have seen the film "It Might Get Loud", or at least the trailer, you will be familiar with this. Jack White rocks one of these suckers:

Update: Working link for the trailer is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YvNVqf2at0

From http://www.golfswingprofessionals.com

.

Step 1: Supplies

First thing, gather your materials:

Some sort of plank of wood. The one I used here isn't ideal because it is thin enough for the nails to come through the other side.

Bottle

Nails

Guitar string

Hammer

Smaller chunk of wood for mounting pickup

Pickup

Output Jack

Step 2: Setting up the String(s)

Decide where you want your string to be positioned. Stick a nail in each end of the board in that position.

Place the bottle up against one of the nails, and mark where the other side of the bottle is. Put another nail in this spot (this will keep the bottle in place).

Remove the bottle, and fasten the string around the nails on either end of the board. Make it tight enough that it's quite hard to slide the bottle back in.

Put the bottle in place. Now you've got the acoustic version of the cheapest guitar ever made.

Step 3: Wiring the pickup

When making this guitar, I wired the pickup first before fixing the pickup in place so I could tell where to put it in order to get a good signal. The pickup I used is a DiMarzio Super Distortion humbucker, which has five wires for splitting the coils. Since I wanted to use both coils, I doubled up the wires from each coil. If you have a similar pickup, then refer to the pictures for instructions. Otherwise, I can't help you as I really know don't know much about wiring. Please excuse my poor instructions in this step. Here's what I did:

Black and braided wire - attached to tab on output jack connecting to shaft of the patch cord.

White wire - attached to tab connecting to patch cord tip.

Green and red wire - electrical taped over then taped out of the way.

For the moment, I have not soldered the wires in place. If you just want to wrap the wires around their respective connections, it works fine but is not very permanent.

Step 4: Placing the pickup

Next, take your pickup and output jack , and plug it in to your amp. Line up your pickup to your guitar, and find a good place under the string where you get a nice strong signal. Mark it on the board.

Next, take your smaller chunk of wood, and nail it in place . This board should be thick enough to raise the pickup to the desired height. Screw or nail the pickup to the board.

Step 5: Play it

Now you're finished. Get out your slide and play it. If you want to tune it, hammer in one of the end nails a bit until you've got the right pitch. Also, I've found that the nail holding the bottle in place can be used as a whammy bar. Wicked, huh?

The next thing you could do would be add another string or two and put them in drop-d tuning or something like that. Good luck.

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Make A Guitar Pickup

Published by Leperello Mikesiah on November 5, 2007

Intro: Make A Guitar Pickup

How to make a single coil guitar pickup!
This will show you how to make your own guitar pickup. It won't look or sound exactly like a regular pickup, but its a fun and interesting project.

What You'll Need:

Stuff:
-Paper
- 42 or 43 gauge copper wire (very thin)
- Six steel machine screws and nuts
- Neodymium (super strong) magnets or one long bar magnet
- Thin plastic (like that on a cd case) or Thin pieces of wood
- Wax
- Wire
- Solder
- Superglue

Tools/equipment:
-Dremel and dremel accessories
-Screwdriver
-Sewing machine (optional)

You can go out and buy all these things, but you can probably find most of them within old crap you already possess. For example, I found the copper wire in a pair of broken dog clippers. And if you don't have some of the equipment you can always improvise.

Here are some links I found useful while learning how to make my pickups:

Stew Mac--Pickup Building (especially "Single Coil Pickup Kits")

A guy who made a humbucker.

GuitarAttack Look at Winding pickups "Guerilla Style" to see more about the sewing machine pickup winder idea.

Image Notes
1. The finished product!

Image Notes
1. Another pickup I made and installed in my acoustic guitar. It's being held in with a plastic CD case, which isn't exactly attractive, but it works. :)

Step 1: Make your pattern

There are just a few parts to a pickup, and the bobbin(the thing that holds the coil) is the first thing you need put together.

To do this, you'll need to do is make up some kind of pattern for your bobbin. You need one piece for the top and one for the bottom. Look at the pictures and factory made single coils to get the general idea. You can make it in the traditional shape, with rounded ends, or you can be lazy like me and use a more squarish design. Either way will work.

Then you'll need to transfer this pattern onto the material you're using for your bobbin. You can use plastic (from a cd case, for example) or thin pieces of wood. Wood works well because it's easy to work with and has a unique look, but I decided to use plastic for this pickup.

Last of all, cut out your bobbin pieces.

Image Notes
1. My top secret pickup plans. For classified eyes ONLY!

Image Notes
1. Mark yer drill spots!

Step 2: Drill holes

Now you need to drill the holes for your post pieces. Before you drill mark where the holes will be, as this isn't exactly something you want to do freehand. Usually the strings on a guitar are about 1cm apart, but check the spacing of the strings to be sure. Also, you'll need to mark two holes on the bottom piece of the bobbin (see last pic). These are for wrapping the beginning and ends of your copper wire around when winding.

MMkay, since I'm not exactly the Dremel whiz, I drilled some holes in a piece of wood and used this as a guide. It also helped me to sort of shallowly drill the holes a little bit so the dremel didn't go all crizazy on me.

Image Notes
1. Mark yer drill spots!

Image Notes
1. I used this piece of wood as a guide.

Image Notes
1. It's the next drilleration!

Image Notes
1. Don't forget to drill these holes!

Step 3: Assemble the bobbin

After your bobbin pieces are drilled, you're ready to assemble. First, screw the screws part of the way into the top piece of the bobbin. Then sandwich a spacer of some kind between the top and bottom pieces, as shown in the picture below. I prefer to get the two outside screws and a middle one in first, just to be extra sure they're all even.

If you used screws that were too long, like I did, you'll need to cut off the excess. Just be sure to leave enough so that you can put the nuts on later and they'll be secure.

Image Notes
1. Use a spacer as shown to make sure the screws are all even.

Image Notes
1. You'll need to remove these ends before moving on to winding.

Step 4: Riggin' up a pickup winder

There are a lot of things you can use as a pickup winder. You could use your hands, obviously, but that can be kind of slow and inaccurate. You could also use a drill or electric screwdriver.

I chose to use a sewing machine, mainly because it's really easy to rig up and use. On the side of all sewing machines there is a wheel type thing that spins around. This is where you want to secure your bobbin. I'm not sure about other sewing machines, but on the one I used there was a small, short screw on this wheel. I removed this and stuck a longer screw through one of the holes on the bottom piece of my bobbin and secured it in the wheel.

Image Notes
1. Secure your bobbin to your sewing machine here.

Step 5: Winding

Pickups are made using very thin copper wire, 42 or 43 gauge. I would recommend buying your wire in a spool to make the winding easier, but you can find this kind of wire in other objects if you want. For example, I found mine in a pair of old dog clippers. However, just a slight warning, the winding will go more slowly if you don't have a nice round spool.

To start winding, wrap a few inches of the copper wire around and through the left hand hole on the bottom piece of the bobbin (the other hole is used to secure the bobbin to the sewing machine in step 4).

Wrap the wire around the bobbin at least ten times by hand. Then, starting slowly, press down the sewing machine pedal as you let out wire from the spool. It's very important to remember that if the wire breaks, you'll have to start your winding over. That's why you need to get the tension just right. You don't want to hold the wire too tight or it will break, and if you hold it to loose it will tangle.

I've read many different opinions on how many winds a pickup should have. I usually put on as many winds as the bobbin will hold and it seems to work. My opinion is that if it looks right, it's probably close.

Image Notes
1. Secure your bobbin to your sewing machine here.

Image Notes
1. This is where you secure the beginning...
2. ...and this is where you secure the end.

Step 6: Soldering

Once you're done winding your coil, you need to solder the lead wires.

Before you can solder though, you need to scrape the reddish coating off of the wire that is wrapped around the two holes on the bottom piece of the bobbin. You can use very fine sandpaper, your fingernail, or the end of a little screwdriver (see pic) to do this.

Usually the beginning of the coil is soldered to black wire and the end is soldered to white wire. I couldn't find any white wire so I used red instead.

Image Notes
1. An example of what your soldering job should NOT look like.

Image Notes
1. This is another pickup I made that I did a better job of soldering.

Step 7: Potting the pickup

Potting or saturating a pickup with wax is done to help keep the wires in the coil in place and prevent the pickup from becoming microphonic.

I used Gulf Wax (candle wax) to saturate my pickup because it was available, but you could also use a mixture of 80% candle wax and 20% beeswax.

Melting the wax directly on top of a heat source, in a saucepan on the stove, for example, can overheat the wax and cause it to become highly flammable. And we do not want to lose our eyebrows while making guitar pickups do we? NO! So, to melt the wax, I filled a big container about half full of almost boiling water and placed a smaller container inside. A tin can works transfers the heat from the water to the wax more effectively, so use one if you have one handy. Gulf wax comes in blocks, which don't melt very quickly, so I used a knife to break the wax into smaller pieces. Then I put this wax in the smaller container.

When the wax is completely melted, hold your pickup by the lead wires and submerse it in the wax. You will see bubbles coming out of the coil and you need to leave the pickup in the wax until the bubbles stop. For me this seemed to be about 5-10 minutes, but for you it could be longer.

Take the pickup out of the wax and wipe of the excess while it's still in a liquid form.

Step 8: Finishing Touches

There are just a couple more things left to do!

After your pickup has totally cooled from the potting process, you can put the magnets on your pickup. The magnets you need are called neodymium magnets(they are also known as power magnets, or super strong magnets).

When you put them on you have to make sure their poles are all facing the same direction. You can check their direction using another magnet, of course. Super glue them in place when you're ready. This is easier said than done, though. Super strong magnets seem to go everywhere except the place you want them.

When you finish doing this, it's a good idea to wrap something around the coil to protect the fine wires. I like to use thread seal tape/ teflon tape because it's easy to remove if you need to fix your pickup.

And that's it! You're done!

Image Notes
1. You can see in this pic that I put washers under the nuts. I only did this because I didn't trim the screws enough and needed to make the tops of the nuts level somehow.
2. these are the magnets!

Step 9: It Is Time!

This is the crude rig I use to test my pickups since I don't have a spare guitar to ruin.

Also on this page is a picture of another pickup I made.

Image Notes
1. This is what I use to test my pickups. Twist your lead wires on to these, plug the other end into your amp, and hold your pickup over the strings of a guitar to hear the sweet sound of success! (you might have to turn the volume on the amp up a bit)

Image Notes
1. The finished product!

Image Notes
1. Another pickup I made and installed in my acoustic guitar. It's being held in with a plastic CD case, which isn't exactly attractive, but it works. :)

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Improved Strat for less than $20, Potting and Semi - Sheilding Your Guitar by carbon12 based

How to save money by making your own guitar plans by hategoat08

Army-Navy Mandolin on the Cheap

Published by andrew.spencer.2 on September 22, 2010

Intro: Army-Navy Mandolin on the Cheap

A mandolin is a small stringed instrument, traditionally with 8 strings in 4 courses of  2, this means you play it like a 4 string instrument such as a ukulele. The term "Army-Navy" mandolin or "Pancake" mandolin refers to the body shape in that it is flat on both the front and the back instead of domed like an "A" style or "F" style archtop mandolin. A quick Google search will tell you more than you ever cared to know about their history.

This instructable chronicles my progress through making one as cheaply and easily as possible. Please note: this is not a for dummies guide, it is just what I did and how I did it. 

Recommended reading:
The Ultimate Bluegrass Mandolin Construction Manual  by Roger H. Siminoff
If you're interested in more details, or want to build the genuine article, I highly recommend getting your hands on this manual. It is a wealth of knowledge by the man who literally wrote the book on the subject. 

The attached instructions from Stewmac.com about assembling their campfire mandolin kit. I didn't do things quite the same as they did, but it's handy to read so you get a good picture of what is involved. 

Tools:
basic woodworking hand tools
sander
drill
heat gun & spray bottle or water pistol for wood bending
dremel tool if you want to get fancy
lots of clamps

Materials:
3/4" softwood scraps, ideally spruce
3/4" hardwood scraps, I used an old floorboard
1/4" hardwood for the fretboard
4mm plywood, alternatively wood planed to this thickness
an 8" piece of 3/16" steel rod, I found mine in an old dead printer
Mandolin hardware (strings, tuning machines , fretwire , tailpiece , nut )

I was able to do the whole thing for under $45, but if you're not a penny pinching cheapskate such as myself, you can find a kit here .

Links:
siminoff.net  an excellent source of kits, parts, and information
stewmac.com  another great place to find parts
Crystal Forest Mandolins  a quick overview of the proper process
Chris Williams' mandolin  a more detailed review of a 4 string flat top

campfire mando.pdf(612x792) 1 MB

top & back pattern A3.pdf(1183x829) 346 KB

patterns A3.pdf(1183x829) 137 KB

Step 1: Cut out

If you followed any of the above links, or if you already know anything about luthiery, you will have no doubt realised that these aren't traditionally made out of cheap plywood. Tradition dictates bookmatched quartersawn hardwoods such as Maple or Honduras Mahogany, and tonewoods like Sitka Spruce or Californian Redwood. However, for me I have found that the 4mm exterior grade 3ply that I had left over from my boat building project  fit the bill for both strength and lightness. As a bonus, it's easier to work with, you can cut it with a knife, and it's only NZ$20 for a full sheet. You're more than welcome to use the proper materials, but some of the methods you'll need will be similar to those in the links section than what I'll show here. 

Enough talk, lets get down to it. Start out by printing off the blueprints for the neck and the top & back.

Cut a couple strips for the sides, 1 3/4" wide by 20" long. You can do this with a straightedge and a sharp knife, just score it a few times and snap it like sheetrock.

Cut one piece of ply for the top, try to pick a bit with some nice grain, and cut it about 1/2" wide of the line.

Cut another for the back, also about 1/2" oversize all around, making sure to include the bit at the top for the heel of the neck. I forgot that bit and had to scarf on some scrap later on.

For the headblock and tailblock I had to laminate together some pieces of my hardwood floorboard to get 1 3/4" stock. Once you have a block about 6" x 3" x 1 3/4" trace the headblock curve onto it from the blueprint. You can cut the neck heel tab off of the blueprint for this, we won't need it again.

Carefully cut out the headblock making sure to keep the blade square, we'll be needing both halves of it.

Cut out a piece of hardwood for the tailblock as per the blueprint.

Trace & cut 2 or 3 pieces for the neck, it needs to finish at least 2" thick for the neck and about 3" at the peghead end, but you can add  ears for that later.
As you'll see later on, my peghead finished to about 6" long, so I ended up cutting off a lot of material from the end. It will depend on the peghead design you choose, but the neck profile blueprint allows for a full F-style scroll peghead length.

Glue up your neck.

Image Notes
1. score ply along straightedge with razor knife and....

Image Notes
1. ...**SNAP!!**

Image Notes
1. Headblock
2. Save this piece for clamping
3. use a bandsaw if you have one

Image Notes
1. Neck piece 1 of 3

Step 2: Bending the Sides

The plywood is easy enough to bend once it's wet, but to make it stay where I wanted it, I put some heat to it with a 1500w heat gun. 

Lay out the blueprint and clamp down the tailblock and the inverse of the headblock as in the first pic. 

Do the sides one at a time, give the strip a good soaking with the spray bottle and keep it handy because the heat gun will dry the wood out quick. 

To do the actual bending process I would clamp the gun to the bench, turn it on and run the wet ply back & forth in front of it, constantly bending it between my hands & spraying it when it dried out.

Apply the heat to the inside of the curve one part at a time, and check it against the blueprint often so you know when to move along the strip to the next bit. 

When you think it's pretty close, whack it in the headblock and clamp it up along the edge down to the tailblock so you've got what looks like the 2nd picture.

Wait for it to dry out, the heat gun can assist with this if you've got heatproof clamps.
When it doesn't feel damp any longer take it out of the clamps and hitch the tips together with a piece of tape so it doesn't straighten out while you bend the other side. 

Do the same with your other strip, you should be a pro at this by now.

Remove the clamps and carefully mark the centre lines from the blueprint onto the head & tail of both sides. 
Cut the sides to length. 

Attach the sides together at the head end with a strip of 2" masking tape on the outside, then put it all back on the blueprint and glue in the head & tail blocks, being sure to get glue in the butt joints between the 2 strips. 

While it is drying, print another copy of the blueprint and glue it to some heavy cardboard, double thickness if you can find it. Cut it out with a razor knife at the inside rim line, also cut out the head & tail blocks. Once the glue is dry and the body is out of the clamps, bung the cardboard inside it to keep it in shape, it should be a pretty snug fit. 

Image Notes
1. Tailblock
2. Headblock

Image Notes
1. Side 1

Image Notes
1. Side 2

Step 3: Neck

Your neck blank should be dry by now, true up the fretboard plane on the sander and trace the fretboard plane pattern onto it. 

Before shaping out the neck, cut a slot for the truss rod about 3/8" deep on the table saw or router or whatever you have. 

Start the shaping process with something fairly coarse. I like to sweep back & forth sideways with a skill saw with the guard pinned back, but I'm not recommending you try that. A belt sander works fine, or a rasp & spokeshave if that's how you roll. 

Make sure to sand the curve where the neck meets the body. Check it often against the body and the neck profile pattern to make sure it will fit snugly and you don't loose the angle.

When you get close to the lines and the neck starts to look how you want it, switch to something a little finer like in the 4th photo. 

Next comes the truss rod. Cut your rod to exact length & rough it up a little with a file or grinder to give the glue more purchase. It should sit completely below the wood, when it does, mix up some epoxy and fill it in. I put some sellotape on the ends to keep the glue from leaking out. 

Image Notes
1. Truss rod goes here

Step 4: Tone bars

For the tone bars, use some 1/4" x 3/4" softwood. I had some redwood left over from my last F5, but whatever you've got will do. 

Cut the pieces to length from the top & back blueprint and angle the ends at about 30 degrees.
Trace the lines onto the inside of the top & back.

Set up a sanding jig like they explain in the .PDF, you want about a 2 1/2" rise in 16" (an 8' radius). 
Sand the bottom of your tone bars, once you do one you get an idea of how much material you're removing and can help the rest along with a block plane to speed things up. 

Start gluing with the 2 side bars, when they're dry put a bit of a radius in the ends with a chisel, crown the top and taper the profile a little too if you want. 
Do the remaining bars in the same manner, you'll need to notch the cross braces to clear the tips of the side braces. 

For a bit of soundhole support, glue a bit of surgical gauze between the bars as in the last photo. Use woven gauze if you've got it, this felted mat stuff is a bit messy to work with. Don't worry if you can't find any gauze, its more important with straight grained soundboards to keep them from cracking, we won't have that problem with plywood. 

Image Notes
1. What better way to get tennis elbow?

Step 5: Gluing

You'll need to plane your rim & blocks to get a good fit on the soundboard. Plane more on the left & right than on the head & tail since the soundboard is slightly curved now. Also be sure to get the angle pretty close on the edge of the rim where it mates to the soundboard. The soundboard should touch all around the rim when you set it on, without warping any. 
Run a bead of PVA all around the rim & blocks, line up your soundboard centre line with the seams in the rim sides, and clamp all around. (Pic 2)

You may have noticed that we're not using any kerfing in this project. If you ever want an exercise in frustration, hand cut some kerfing. No, I've figured out that Gorilla Glue works just as well and is a million times easier. 

Once your PVA dries, lose the clamps & cardboard, bring back our old friend the water pistol from the bending we did earlier, douse the inside corner all the way around, and run a nice fat bead of polyurethane in there. Keep it flat or it will run, and smear it up the sides about 1/4" so it doesn't have to overcome the vertical surface tension as it expands. In fact, you would probably get a more uniform expansion if you put it on a record player turntable and spun it around while it dried. Keep me posted if anyone tries that. 

When the Gorilla Glue is dry, plane/sand down the excess on the soundboard. You only have to get it close at the headblock for now.

The jig in picture 6 is for holding everything in place while you glue the neck joint, but really any flat surface will do if your clamps can accommodate it. The jig has a centerline scribed down the middle, as well as the outline of the body & neck, and a support to simulate the bridge. The support should pretty closely match the curvature of the soundboard and be 3/8" high in the middle. 

Lay everything up dry before you get the glue out to make sure you'll be OK with clamping. When you're all set, wet down the joint and apply the Gorilla Glue. Once everything is in place, double check your centre lines to make sure everything is still in a straight line. When that was dry I put a great big wood screw through the headblock into the neck heel for good measure. 

This is your last chance for personalisation on the inside of the instrument, so if you want to name & date the headblock or put anything on the backboard where people will see it though the soundhole, now is the time. 

To attach the backboard, test fit it and scribe a line all the way around. Douse it with water, then run a glue bead just inside the line, not forgetting some for the blocks. Since we won't be able to get our fingers in there once we close it up, run another bead of glue around the inside of the rim as shown in the 2nd to last photo. Make sure to keep the mandolin face up until this dries.
Assemble according to your scribed line and clamp it up. 

Image Notes
1. Cardboard support

Image Notes
1. Soundboard being glued on

Image Notes
1. before

Image Notes
1. During

Image Notes
1. After

Image Notes
1. Eyeball centreline

Image Notes
1. John Hancock

Image Notes
1. Glue
2. Oops, forgot my neck heel extension. Have to add a bit later

Image Notes
1. Glue

Image Notes
1. Attaching the backboard

Step 6: Fretboard

You can get your fingerboard pre-slotted from stewmac.com, and for $14 its hard to go wrong, but if you've got some 1/4" hardwood, its pretty simple to do yourself. 

Firstly, build a little box jig like you see in the first picture. To make the guide cuts in it, put a piece of perfectly square cut scrap wood in it and run your saw along it to get the cuts straight down. 

Your piece of 1/4" hardwood should be about 2" by 10", leave it square for now, it'll be a lot easier to get your fret cuts straight that way.
Transfer the fret positions to the wood, making sure you've got a square end at the nut before you start. Then its pretty straightforward, cut a slot at each mark, to a depth not quite halfway through the fretboard. 

Now its time to test fit it to the neck, remembering to put the nut in place for a spacer. Scribe the neck lines onto the back of the fretboard and then plane it down to shape. 

This is where you would install fretboard dots if you wanted them, I chose not to on this project. 

Installing the fretwire is pretty simple, snip it to length with some wire cutters, tap it into the slot with a light hammer, and once you've done the lot, file the pointy ends down. 
Now you've got a fretboard! Pretty flash, eh?

We'll also need to cut a little wedge called the fretboard extender that fills the gap between the bottom of the fretboard and the soundboard of the mandolin. 

Image Notes
1. Fretboad extender goes here

Step 7: Bridge

The bridge is another item that is readily available to buy, but just as easy to make. I printed out the below diagram, it took a couple tries to get it to scale, and then glued it to some hardwood and cut around it.
I found some machine screws in my random screw jar, I think they were either M3 or 6-32 thread, about an inch long. I couldn't find any thumbscrews, so just used some nyloc nuts.

Drill the top half of the bridge for through clearance, and the bottom half for screwing in clearance. Don't drill all the way through the bottom half, otherwise your screws might gouge your soundboard. Turn the screws in and then cut the heads off. The top half slides over the screws and should sit on the nuts.

To match the bridge to the soundboard, place a piece of sandpaper face up on the soundboard, and rub the bridge back & forth across it until it can sit perfectly flat, exactly 13 7/8" from the nut. 

Image Notes
1. Cut heads off screws

Step 8: Peghead

There are tons of mandolin peghead designs out there; from the classic Gibson F style, to something simple like mine. You can get creative here, because it really doesn't matter what you do. I thought I would try a slotted peghead since I hadn't done one before, and because I could fit it all on the the blank without gluing on any extra "ears". Whatever you do, just make sure that your tuning machines fit, so it would be good to have them on hand before you start cutting. 

My process for getting the slots went something like this: drill, dremel with router bit, chisel, file. Its generally standard practice to veneer either the face or the face and back of the peghead with hardwood. I wouldn't have, but I needed just a little extra thickness to fit my tuning machines on. That and it covers up the end of the truss rod which would have looked a little funny otherwise. 

Once I had the slots roughed out, I made the holes. To get the centres marked I turned all the tuner knobs until the string holes were parallel, and then very carefully with a mechanical pencil, marked the dots on the edge of the peghead through the string holes in the tuners. I clamped a bit of wood for a fence to the drill press to make sure the holes bored true. 

Step 9: Inlay (optional)

If you've got a Dremel tool and a bit of spare time, you can try putting some decorative inlay on the peghead. True inlay involves cutting your design out of sheets of Paua shell or similar with a jewler's saw and then routing out a cavity in the peghead veneer for it to slot into exactly. I've done this before with an actual Paua shell I found on the beach, but its a bit beyond the scope of this instructable. If you're interested I'd recommend reading Siminoff's chapter on the subject in his manual, its very informative. 

What I chose to do this time instead is something I saw on supersoftdrink's instructable on how to make wooden rings . 

First I printed out the text I wanted, pasted it in place, and routed it out to a depth of about 1mm. You'll need some sort of router stand for your Dremel, don't try it freehand. I used a 1.0mm reverse twist end mill from stewmac.com, but there are probably a variety of bits that would work depending on your design.

Practice on scrap wood before you go gouging into your peghead. If I had taken that advice myself on this project, I would have realised that this doesn't work so well on softwood, especially not when routing to the exact depth of the first lamination of the plywood. If I had known that I probably would have flagged the whole exercise, but you can't do these things halfway. 

Once you've got your holes dug, mix up some epoxy and add some crushed rock or other pretty material. I used some greenstone dust from some core drill cuttings I was doing anyway. Unfortunately for me, that didn't turn out very well either, it came out a sort of murky grey instead of jade green. Perhaps I didn't use enough dust, but it was getting pretty thick. Yet again, testing this would have told me that.

Once it was set but still soft I shaved it off with a razor knife and when it was fully hard I smoothed it down to the wood with a fine flat file.

Image Notes
1. 1. Print

Image Notes
1. 2. Rout

Image Notes
1. 3. Peel off paper

Image Notes
1. curse you softwood!

Image Notes
1. Greenstone dust
2. Epoxy

Step 10: Finishing

To prep for finish, make sure everything is finish sanded. Bring the soundboard and backboard right down to the rim with a belt sander, then go over the whole thing with #220 then #400 hand sandpaper. Put a large screw or similar into the tailpiece for holding/hanging while the finish is drying.

Now it's time to put a finish on the instrument. I chose some antique mahogany wood dye that I had and followed it up with quite a few coats of clear acrylic lacquer. You can install the fretboard first and then mask it off, but I figured it was easier to leave it off since I didn't want it painted.

The first thing I did was put down a strip of masking tape where the fretboard goes. Then I applied the dye according to the instructions on the bottle. I made an attempt at a "hand-rubbed sunburst" design which involves applying more dye around the rim and edges of the soundboard & backboard than in the middle. It didn't turn out looking like a Lloyd Loar original because the goofy plywood grain just wanted to be real dark in places and real light in others, but its pretty unique, so I don't mind. 

If you're lucky enough to be using some nice fiddlebacked curly maple, you can get really good contrast between the different parts of the grain by rubbing it down between coats of dye with 000 steel wool dipped in meths. I didn't bother because my grain was too contrasted to begin with.

Once you've got it the way you like it, start in with the clearcoat. I put on 4 or 5 coats separated by 5 minutes, and then let it dry for 24 hours, wet sand, and repeat. You can get it looking like a mirror this way, it depends on how fussy you are. 

Image Notes
1. "Whitewood" stage. Finish sanded & ready for some dye

Step 11: Final Assembly

Before gluing on the fretboard, check the plane of the neck with a straightedge to make absolutely sure it's true, the last thing we want is any high or low frets. Also check the side clearances on the fretboard, this is your last chance to make sure its flush with the sides of the neck. 

For the nut I used a white bone blank from Stewmac . I cut it down to the width of the neck and shortened it to about 1/8" proud of the fretboard, and glued it on at the same time as the fretboard. To ensure even clamping pressure across all the frets I used a chunk of angle iron on top. Double check that everything is where it should be and don't let any glue runs dry on your nice new neck finish.

I made my own tailpiece, but it was a lot of trouble and didn't turn out quite as nice as I would have liked. If you're keen to build one, you don't need me to tell you how to do it, but I will tell you that it would probably be easier to buy one . 

If you want a finger rest, cut one out of the ply using the finger rest pattern. I attached mine with a couple rods salvaged from a dead PC CD drive, but anything ~1/8" will work. I bent the rods at right angles, routed channels for them to sit in on the back of the finger rest, and epoxied them in place. To attach it to the instrument, transfer the rod locations to the edge of the fretboard/fretboard extender and drill appropriate sized holes. You'll also need a little block of wood glued to the back, and fashion something to attach it to the edge of the rim with. I found everything I needed in my screw bin.

When everything is all dry you can put your tuning machines in if you haven't already, file some string notches, and string it up. Transfer the marks from the string spacing diagram onto the nut & bridge, and put some notches in with a V shaped needle file. You want the angle of the notches in the nut to be between that of the fretboard & the peghead, which I am attempting to illustrate in the last photo. 

And you're done!! There are plenty of resources on the interweb for tuning and learning to play the mandolin, and if I can do it, anybody can! Enjoy!

Image Notes
1. fretboard extender
2. nut shaped & in place
3. PVA

Image Notes
1. Angle iron

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Building Mandolin No. 002

Published by Jnkyrdguy on September 27, 2008

Intro: Building Mandolin No. 002

This project is a sequel to my first mandolin project, Building Mandolin No. 001 . Like my first mandolin, the design is fairly untraditional. For one, it only has four strings compared with a mandolins typical eight. This fact alone has drawn the ire of many a mandolin purist.

This mandolin was much faster to build than my first one, but still took awhile: I did the majority of the construction in about two weeks with around 40 hours of build time. It took another week and 20 hours to complete the mandolin after a two month hiatus. It cost less than $100 for all of the materials for this mandolin making it a relatively inexpensive project considering the end product.

For more information about my first and second mandolin projects (including plans for both), check out my website: thewidgetforge.com

Step 1: Making the Form

The form is a very important part of making a bent side mandolin even though it won't actually be used in the final instrument. The form is a set of plywood pieces used to hold the bent sides in place later when gluing them to the head and tail blocks.

Blocks
I started by making the maple head and tail blocks that would give the finished mandolin much of its structure and connect the body to the neck. The simple neck to head block joint was made with a tenoning jig on the table saw.

Form Blank
I used an "inside" form design where the bent sides will be attached on the outside of the form using rubber bands. I used 3/4 inch birch plywood for the main body of the form. This type of plywood has many more plies and is a made from denser/ higher quality wood than standard pine plywood. This made for clean cuts and a better looking form. If there is any chance you will make another mandolin of the same design, higher quality plywood is definitely worth it.

Attaching the Head Block
I attached the head block with a sturdy 3/4 inch thick block secured with 2 screws in the block and two more in the form. This system is definitely a weak point in the form design, but I haven't come up with a better way to hold the head block in place. This method works, but it's clumsy to work with and isn't the most stable since the block can bend and therefore let the head block move (although only a little bit.)

Cutting It Out
I first glued on the paper template I would use to cut out the top profile of the form. Next I drilled out the corners of the tail block section using 1/4 inch holes. These holes prevent interference with the corners of the tail block when it is snugly fit into place. I did this before cutting out the area where the tail block would be held. This saved a lot of trouble compared with my last mandolin when I forgot this step and had improvise a way to clean up the corners so the tail block would fit. I also drilled a hole in the center of the form to accept a dowel. This dowel will later be used for securing rubber bands that will hold the sides in place. I cut out the form's top profile on the band saw and smoothed it with a drum sander then friction fit the tail block into its recess. With a template glued onto the tail block, I was able to shape the tail block.

Step 2: The Sides

I used a very basic bending iron setup to steam bend the sides. It consists of an iron pipe supported by two pieces of angle iron and tied down to a 2x3 with pipe clamps. The propane tank is supported by a loose clamp. This setup worked quite well for my purposes. It is quick to heat up and holds a steady temperature without too much fuss.

Bending the Sides
The sides were planed to a thickness of a little less than 1/8th of an inch before bending. To bend the sides, I first get the section I want to work with wet. I then rock the section back and forth on the iron until it gets very hot through to the opposite side of the wood. At that point the wood becomes flexible and can bend surprisingly easily with gentle even pressure. After a few seconds on the heat, the bottom side of the wood dries out, so I re-wet the wood then quickly reapply heat to keep the wood bendable.

Cool Down
I secured the sides onto the form to dry and cool. This was much easier with the center dowel system I used. It allows it to easily be a one person job to secure the sides as opposed to using large rubber bands stretched across the whole body. That method took at least two people, one to hold the side in place and the other to stretch the rubber band. With the center dowel and some small rubber bands, I could hold the side in place with one hand and stretched the rubber bands over the top side of the peg, around the rib, and then over the pegs other end sticking out of the forms bottom. I used small, light-duty rubber bands, but heavier ones may be more appropriate depending on how close your bends are to the shape of the form. With the rubber bands I used, even with quite a few, I still had to use a caul and clamps to secure the ends of the sides where there are sharp bends that the rubber bands couldn't pull tight. I used the piece I had cut from the head block in the same area since it was already the right shape. I also added a clamp down the center to hold the tail end tight to the tail block. I used the same clamping setup later for gluing the sides to the blocks.

Step 3: The Neck

The first step is to bandsaw the rough side profile using a paper template as a guide. I had to glue on ears to make the full width of the peghead even though it wouldnt be too wasteful to use a solid piece. To make the tuner holes, I first carefully centered the top paper template. I used this template to drill holes for tuning machines before cutting out the top profile for an easier job of holding the peghead down securely. To finish the neck (besides carving which is actually most labor intensive part of making the neck), I cut out the top profile and sanded it smooth.

Step 4: The Rim

Gluing on the Sides
I used the same system to glue the sides to the blocks as I did to hold them on after bending. I again had to use cauls to hold the sides securely to the head block and a long clamp to hold the bottom of the sides tight to the tail block. The rubber band system was especially helpful for positioning the sides accurately when gluing, even without an extra pair of hands. I used epoxy for this glue-up since the joints weren't pulling up as tight as I wanted. The joints were much better than on my last mandolin and wood glue would likely have worked, but I wanted to play it safe. I didn't get the joint between the side halves at the tail of the instrument as tight as I had wanted, but knew I would be covering that joint up with a piece of binding later.

Trimming the Sides
I used a low angle plane to carve the sides even with the mould and blocks. A thumb plane may also work for this task. I had already removed the block connecting the head block to the main form for easy access to the top of the sides. This is one of the times when this method of holding these parts together is a bit awkward. It would be better to keep the block in place and keep everything securely connected, but I had to remove it since it was in the way.

Finishing the Rim
At this point, I knocked the rim free of the mould and sanded the top and back surfaces flush with a belt sander while it was turned off. The form is now ready for use with the next mandolin I make with this pattern.

Step 5: The Top

The top is made of spruce and about 3/32 thick. To cut out the Sound holes, I used a paper template to locate and I cut out the sound holes. I started by drilling a hole, removing the majority of the material with a coping saw, then finishing with a wood rasp and needle files. These soundholes wound up being much closer to the edge than on the last mandolin. It took a lot more care and time to cut out the holes without breaking the top.

Braces
The braces were first cut out of a larger piece of spruce sold to be used in guitars. I notched the two braces together in the x pattern then glued them onto the top with wood glue. I used a flat board to clamp the top and braces flat while they glued.

Carving the Braces
I used a thumb plane to do the majority of the carving of the braces. The final height ended up being about 3/8ths of an inch at the center to essentially nothing at the tips. I didnt try to scallop the braces at all since my attempts on the last mandolin didnt work out to my satisfaction.

Step 6: The Back

Gluing the Joint
I glued the two halves of the back together with wood glue using the rig pictured. Once the glue was dry, I planed the top to its final thickness and cut out the top shape with plenty of overhang.

Back Braces
I made the center joint reinforcement out of one piece for this mandolin and glued it on first using a clamp at either end and a set of wood braces used to clamp the middle postion of the brace. I then notched and glued on the cross braces again using a board to keep everything flat while the glue dried. The ends of the lateral braces were carved down using a wood rasp.

Label
I made up a custom label that matches the label that I glued in position under the bass side sound hole. It reads:
Mandolin No. 002
Built by Chris Williams, 2006

Step 7: Assembling the Body

Gluing on the Neck
Besides the awkward way I had to clamp the neck to the head bloc, this step went very smoothly. Although the joint wasn't as tight as I would have liked for strengths sake since I used wood glue, it did make the job easier and was still plenty strong. My last mandolin's joint was so tight I could't get it together with glue on it even though I was able to dry fit it.

Kerfed Lining
I added the kerfed lining one side at a time securing each of the pieces with clothespins, then removed the excess lining using a sanding table.

Gluing on the Top and Back
I glued on the back and the top in one glue-up. To help me get even clamping pressure all the way around the top and back, I made more toy wheel, bolt and wing nut spool clamps for this glue up. I also added a number of other clamps to secure the head and tail block areas and fill in where needed.

Shaping the Fretboard
The fretboard was cut to it's final size using the belt sander and a paper template so I could use the fretboard's top profile to carve the neck. I brought the fretboard right to the line on the template. I was also able to add the inlayed position dots to the top of the fretboard.

Carving the Neck
I carved the neck down to its final dimension using the fretboard attached with small pins drilled into the top of the neck for the top profile. I also carved the heel of the neck to the correct size and created a smooth transition between the neck and body.

Step 8: Fretting

To install the frets, I started with the precut fret wire positioned at an angle to the fret board and gently taped it into place with a small ball peen hammer so the fret would catch the corner of the fret slot. From there, I carefully taped across to the unseated side until the entire fret was seated up to the tangs. To seat the frets the rest of the way, I started with strong blows to the two outside edges, working back and forth between the two sides until both sides were seated. This helps to avoid bending a concave curve into the fret wire, which could prevent the edges from seating all the way. From there it is just a matter of seating the center of the fret. The trickiest part of this process is keeping the hammer level to prevent damage to the fingerboard.

If a fret didn't seat all the way across, I removed it with the pair of pliers shown above. The small teeth allow the pliers to grab under the fret, so it can be pulled out. Being careful to not knock the little bits of wood that tear out when a fret was removed, I installed a new fret with the tangs in a different position from where they were on the old fret so the tangs have clean undamaged wood to grab onto.

Leveling the Frets
I leveled the frets with fine sand paper attached to a flat block of wood. To finish the frets, I re-rounded them with a crowning file and then sanded and buffed them to a shiny finish.

Filing the Frets
To dress the frets, I filed them the edges individually in order to give them an appealing angle and remove any sharp edges. I used a large file so that I could work with two frets at a time up higher on the fretboard which helped to protect the edge of the fretboard. On the lower frets, I used tape on the edges of the file to prevent them from plowing through the fretboards edge. To get the angle on the ends of the frets, I clamped the fretboard up on its edge and filed the angle using a block of wood clamped to the table as a guide so all the frets would be consistent.

Step 9: The Binding

The binding was made from two pieces of 0.080 inches thick by 1/4 inch tall rosewood purchased from Stewart-Macdonald. At 34.5 inches long, each of the two pieces used were long enough to make the top and and back binding each from one continuous piece of rosewood.

Routing
I routed the channel for the binding using a table router. I used a router bit with a bearing that rides on the mandolin's sides for a consistent offset. This method was very reliable, accurate and took no time to set up. I used a combination of two different bits to achieve the desired offset. I took the bearing from a 1/4 inch flush cut bit and the cutter from a 3/8ths inch bit which gave me a 1/16ths inch wide channel.

At the neck on the top side, I stopped just shy of the heel and then cleaned up the corner with a chisel. I went a bit too far at the neck on the back side and marked up the underside of the neck. These gouges luckily cleaned up of with a bit of recarving at the base of the neck. It really is only necessary to route to the heel on both the top and back since the button is going go there anyway.

Tail Binding Slot
I cut the slot for the tail trim that would cover the joint between the two halves of the sides on the table saw. I used a rig that was quickly improvised using a piece of plywood screwed onto a miter gauge and then clamped directly to the mandolin's body. One pass on the table saw was enough to make the 1/8th inch wide slot.

The Button
Unlike most buttons I've seen, this one extends beyond the neck's end and over the top of the sides. This is due to the very short heel section of the neck. The button looked strangely proportioned to me when I layed it out so it would only cover the top of the neck. I used chisels freehand to remove the wood from the button area and to smooth and flatten the final surface to accept the button.

Bending the Binding
I used the same rig to bend the binding as I used to bend the sides. I secured the binding to the body with large rubber bands while they dried and cooled.

Gluing on the Binding
I first had to carefully cut the top binding to length so that the ends would fit snugly flow into the neck. I left the back a bit long to be trimmed to size later. To secure the binding while the glue dried I used masking tape. This was very easy to do with only one person. It took a lot of tape and some care in how and how tightly the tape was secured so that the binding would be held firmly in place while drying. I added a bunch of rubber bands to the heel area where the binding was especially stubborn.

Trimming the Binding
Once the glue was dry, I planed down the top edge with a thumb plane. I sanded down the overhang on the sides using a spindle sander. Being careful to not take off too much material, I cut off the excess from the button ends of the binding for a tight fit with the button.

Tailpiece Pins
Using a paper template positioned with the binding as a guide, I drilled holes for the tailpiece pins. With the body clamped down securely on drill press, I drilled the four holes at least an inch deep each using an 1/8th inch brad point bit.

Attaching the Button
I glued on the oversized rosewood button using wood glue. I made the button by cutting a piece of rosewood slightly thick, then slowly sanded the profile using the actual heel of the neck as a guide. I could have made the button much closer to the correct size as it was very difficlut to par down without hurting the rest of the neck once glued in place.

Installing the Tail Binding
The tail end binding was glued with wood glue and held in place with masking tape to dry. I sanded the excess with the spindle sander again.

Step 10: Applying the Finish

I finished the mandolin using wipe-on-poly. Blue masking tape was very effective for covering the area where the fretboard would be glued and I didn't want cover with finish. I applied three coats with about three hours between the first and second coats as well as between the second and third coats. In-between coats I knocked down the shine and lightly smoothed the finish with 0000 steel wool. After the third coat, I waited at least 12 hours before going over the finish a final time using 0000 steel wool. You can also polish the finish with a varnish polish and a clean cloth if you would like an even higher level of shine.

Step 11: Setup

Bridge
I started by making a rosewood blank just large enough to fit the bridge. I began to create the bridge's shape by first marking out the side profile of the bridge on the blank and then removing the majority of the unneeded material with a bandsaw. I used a microplane and a wood rasp to refine the side profile with the bridge clamped in a vise. Once I was satisfied with the side profile, I marked out the top profile. I used a rasp to cut the top profile by carving the sides so they curve up to the top layout lines. I hand sanded the bridge smooth then cut in the notches that would hold the strings in place over the bridge.

Gluing on the Fretboard
Since the pins were already installed to align the fingerboard, it was a very simple glue up using wood glue. I held the fretboard in place with a bunch of quick grip clamps all along the neck and over the body for even pressure.

Tuners
I installed the tuners with the included hardware. This included small screws which I had to pre-drill for. These screws stop the tuners from spinning. With the strings in place, I could finish fitting the nut and adjust the height of the bridge.

The Nut
The nut is often time consuming. It took me about an hour to make the one shown, and 30 minutes to ruin the first attempt. There is a very thin line between a low action that plays well, and a low action that causes the strings to buzz constantly. The only way to ensure a good result is to go slow, be patient and try not to push it too far. I've gotten caught a few times trying to make the action just a little lower, at which point I end up going too low and ruin the nut. Generally I just come prepared to do two nuts before I come up with one that I am happy with.

Tailpiece Pins
The unique tailpiece system I devised for the mandolin consists of four brass pins made from 1/8th inch round brass rod. I filed a groove into the side to position the strings, making sure not to leave any sharp edges.

Step 12: The Finished Mandolin

This mandolin sounds better than my first mandolin. It is much better when played with a pick than my other mandolin, but it still doesn't sound as good as my Kentucky f5 style mandolin. It sounds best when it is finger-picked, which makes for a sweeter sound than when played with a pick. The harsher tone of this mandolin when picked compared with traditional mandolins is likely due at least in part to the small pattern. At only 8.5 inches wide, it is much smaller than an f5 style mandolin which is about 10 inches wide. A larger pattern would likely allow for more bass response and volume.

I prefer the look of this mandolin over my last one as well. I like the rounder look of the body that results from a longer neck and a shorter overall mandolin. The proportions seem to work out better. My last mandolin ended up emphasizing the fact that it is much narrower than most mandolins. The biggest improvement in the look of this mandolin comes form the addition of the various pieces of trim. The addition of the inlayed position markers and the rosewood binding together make for a much more finished and professional looking piece. I still would like to add more trim to the next mandolin I make to pull the elements together even more effectively. I want to add binding to the peghead to match the trim on the body. I would also like to add a peg head inlay, likely of a simple symbol, my initials or maybe my last name.

That's enough rambling from me: I'll let the pictures speak their thousands of words!

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Bullet Shell Pan Flute

Published by rabidiga on November 7, 2010

Intro: Bullet Shell Pan Flute

Pan Pipe made by scavenging a few bullet casings and random bits of junk to make a musical instrument perfect for the post apocalypse jam session!

I came up with this for a contest being held over at www.wastelandoutpost.com where we were to build a post apocalyptic musical instrument for under thirty dollars. Being the cheapskate I am I made this one from scraps lying around the house, though to buy the stuff new it would still be under $10.

Super easy to make. Took me about an hour even though I am clumsy as hell when it comes to working with wire. Depending on your choice of supplies it could have easily been finished in half the time. And while they don't sound perfect I was able to belt out a killer 'Ode to Joy' even if it was a bit out of tune.

Step 1: Supplies

Things you will need-

Bullets of different length , As many as you can find, in general the longer the bullet the deeper the note. Also only bullets that get smaller at the tip make a noise, the casings that are open the entire length just make a whoosh sound.
                  TIP: Find a shooting range near you. People just leave their spent shells on                                          the  ground, you will find hundreds of them for free. Wash them though.

2 Rods. These rods will vary in length depending on how many bullet shells you find. Line up your casings as you want them to end up and measure out your rods giving a few inches extra for the ends. These rods can be anything stiff, Coat hangers, nails, bolts, a pen, a stick, a fork... I used a couple of all thread bolts because I had them lying around and the wire held in place against the bolt threads as I worked with it.

Wire or other Binding Material. you need something to bind the bullets to the rods. I used beading wire I stole from my wife but you can use anything from string to electrical tape.

Pliers / wire cutters. You only need these if you are using wire. Mostly you just need the wire cutter aspect but the pliers can be handy for cinching that last little bit of the wire or if your bullet casings are bent you can gently squeeze them back into shape.

Image Notes
1. Different Caliber bullets give off different tones, find as many as you can
2. Beading wire or any other binding material.
3. 2 rods of some sort. length will very depending on how many bullets you have
4. Pliers and wire cutters. This are not be necessary if you aren't using wire.

Image Notes
1. Shotgun shells DO make a note but I didn't think they would look right. I suppose you could cut shells to different lengths to make a fully shotgun pan pipe
2. Bullet shells only seem to make a tone if they have get smaller at the top. The ones that are the same width the entire length didn't make any noise

Step 2: Attach a Bullet

This is the part that takes some patience and a touch of dexterity. If you need to cheat use super glue and then come back later. Even without the super glue though the wire will be plenty to hold them in place (I didn't use glue).

First cut a length of wire about 20-30 inches long (eyeball it). Then place your bullet casing against your rod and start looping the wire around both pieces in a crisscross pattern. If you are going for the 'rough' look like mine then don't worry about being perfect. Once you have enough loops around it twist the two ends together like a twist tie on a loaf of bread. If you want you can use wire cutters to snip off the extra, I left mine on trying to get a barbed wire look.

Go down the entire rod adding all of your casings. Make sure you leave enough room between them, too close together and you will be hitting two notes at once when you play. I found about 1/2 an inch was plenty, or about the width of another casing.

Image Notes
1. NOTE! The amount of wire you see here was only 10 inches. After doing the first two I realized it would be much easier with 20-30 inches worth
2. Unless you are gluing these in place it doesn't matter where along the bullet you wrap it, the bullet will slide up and down so you can adjust it later.

Image Notes
1. Leave enough room in between the casings that you can move your lips from one to another easily. Too close together and you will be hitting 2 notes at once

Step 3: Bottom Row

Now that your top row is all attached you need to add the bottom row

"But Iga, WHY do we need a bottom row? They are all held in place already.."

Good question! If you only have 1 rod the bullets casings are going to swivel freely around the rod, making it so that you can't blow evenly across them all. The second rod puts them all evenly up and down.

Now when attaching the bottom rod you will use the same technique as the first. But make sure to attach the two outer casings first, this will lock in the rod and make it worlds easier to attach all the middle bullets.

Once they are all tied on you can now tweak each bullet moving them up and down until they are relatively strait along the tops. This makes it easier to find the holes as you play, they don't have to be perfect but as long as they aren't all over the place it will work fine.

Tip 1- Now you can add a dab of superglue down between the casing and the rod. This will help keep them from moving around on you later. They do slide up and down still and could potentially fall out if you drop it.

Tip 2- I suppose if you really want you could fine tune the sounds by dropping tiny amounts of craft glue into the bullets. Try not to hit the wall of the casing, you want it to pool at the bottom. This in effect makes the chamber of the casing shorter, giving it a higher pitch. It's like a soda bottle, the more liquid you have in it the higher the note.

Congratulations, you now have a ballistic pan flute!

Image Notes
1. Start with the outside two first, this will hold the bottom bar steady for the rest. Otherwise you will fight it the entire way
2. You want the tops relatively flat so when you move your lips from one side to the other you don't have to guess at where the hold is

Step 4: Playing your flute

The best way I can describe it is like blowing across the top of a bottle.

Pucker your lips like you are going to whistle (don't whistle though) and gently blow across the holes, not into them. A little bit of experimentation and you will be a virtuoso of the pan pipes :)

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Superterrific Tub Bass

Published by jts3k on June 29, 2009

Intro: Superterrific Tub Bass

In this instructable we'll build a terrific sounding tub bass that is highly suitable for studio recording and/or live performance. Build time is less than one hour using very simple tools and around $30 in materials. An optional contact microphone can be added to amplify the instrument.

On this step I've included some samples of the instrument in use. All three mp3s are the same snippet, recorded three different ways:

"tub_bass_mic" is an acoustic recording using a regular old microphone, as evidenced by the background noise and sounds of people walking around in my studio

"tub_bass_contact_mic" uses the contact microphone - squeaky clean and provides very different tone than a normal acoustic microphone

"tub_bass_mix_with_eq_and_reverb" - a mix of both mics with some EQ and reverb, this is probably how I would use it on a record

Sweet!

tub_bass_contact_mic.mp3156 KB

tub_bass_mic.mp3339 KB

tub_bass_mix_with_eq_and_reverb.mp3365 KB

Step 1: Overview

The tub bass is a simple and venerable folk instrument that can be used to fill out the low end of many styles of music. There are two principle areas of basic tub bass design wherein one may encounter differences of opinion: the string material and the neck construction.

Our bass makes use of plastic-coated galvanized steel cable (a.k.a. plastic-coated aircraft cable) for the string - this will be nearly impossible to break and provides far superior tone and playability to parachute/nylon cable. The plastic coating allows you to play the string with bare hands.

Our neck is unattached and pivots on the rim of the tub. Notes are thus created by flexing the neck to change the amount of tension on the string. This makes for a more intuitive playing style than an instrument with a fixed neck and fret board, but it will take some practice for your muscles to learn how to hit and hold specific notes. A used-up wire spool acts as a slide-able capo, allowing us to play in different pitch ranges/keys.

Our instrument also adds an optional pickup for amplification in the form of a contact microphone. I made mine from scratch using the recipe from Nicolas Collins' excellent Handmade Electronic Music (essential reading for instrument makers/hackers), but readymade contact mics are also available on the cheap .

This is the same tub bass that is used by The Asker Brothers to achieve their signature thwonk-a-donk sound. Let's begin!

Image Notes
1. nice tub!

Step 2: Materials & Tools

Materials:

One tub, our resonant chamber.

One broom/mop handle, the neck. This should be un-tapered so you can make use of a sliding capo.

One used-up wire spool, the capo. Make sure it's a good fit on the neck - you'll need a little extra space for the string when fitting the capo over the neck. I found that a standard-sized wire spool was the perfect fit for a standard broom/mop handle.

Plastic-coated aircraft cable, the string. This is the only part you're not likely to find in the local hardware store. I ordered mine from webriggingsupply.com , part no. 02C030477. We'll be stripping the coating on the ends of the string to thread it through the neck/tub/hardware, and the width of the interior steel portion of the cable should be 1/16. This width of cable has lovely tone. Get at least six feet of cable.

Ferrules and Stops, cable hardware for 1/16 steel cable. This is the hardware we'll use to attach the string to our neck and tub. I was able to find packages of National item #N283-846 at the local hardware store, two of those put me in business.

One jar lid, the washer we use underneath the tub when attaching the string.

Optional: one contact microphone to act as a pickup for amplication. Make your own or buy one .

Tools

Dremel tool. We'll be using the disc sander bit to cut/shape the aircraft cable and to make a notch in the bottom of the neck. The 3/32 drill bit will be used to drill holes for threading in the neck, tub, and jar lid.

Wire stripper. Used to strip plastic coating off the ends of our string and to crimp the cable hardware.

A saw. To cut off the little screwy section of our broom/mop handle.

Sally forth!

Image Notes
1. The tub, our resonant chamber
2. A broom/mop handle, the neck
3. The dremel tool, used to drill holes and cut/shape the steel cable
4. A saw for cutting off the tip of our neck.
5. Helping hands are helpful
6. Plastic Coated Galvanized Aircraft Cable, our string
7. A home-made contact microphone is used as a "pick-up" to play amplified.
8. Salsa jar lid acts as washer when attaching the string to the tub.
9. Wire stripper strips plastic coating off the ends of our string and crimps the duplex sleeves that attach the string to the tub/neck.
10. Two packages of Ferrules and Stops for 1/16" steel cable. National item# N283-846.
11. A used-wire spool acts as a slide-able capo for changing the range of the instrument.

Step 3: Prep string for neck

Strip ~5 inches of coating from one end of the cable. You'll need to do this in two inch sections. When stripping the coating, the end of the cable may become frayed which will make it hard to thread it through the neck/tub/hardware. If this happens, use the dremel tool with the disc sander bit to cut off the frayed section. The broad section of the disc sander bit can then be used to shape and sharpen the tip of the wire, giving you a nice pointy end that will be easy to thread.

Image Notes
1. Strip about 5 inches of plastic coating from the end of the cable. The end of my cable became frayed when doing this, we'll fix this with the dremel tool.

Image Notes
1. Use the disc sander bit on the dremel tool to cut off the frayed section of the cable. Don't try using normal wire cutters, they can't handle the galvanized toughness of aircraft cable.

Image Notes
1. Take that, frayed section.

Image Notes
1. The broad part of the disc sander bit was carefully used to "sharpen" the end of the cable, making it easy to thread it through the neck hole and hardware.

Step 4: Attach string to neck

Drill a hole in the end of your neck using the 3/32 drill bit on your dremel tool (or drill). Thread the stripped section of the cable through the hole in the neck. Secure the cable by using the cable hardware: thread it through one section of the double-barrel ferrule, then the stop, then back through the other section of the double-barrel ferrule. Crimp the ferrule by lightly mangling it at multiple points with the teeth of your wire stripper (or use a real crimper if you have one). This will make the ferrule press firmly down on the cable, holding the string in place.

Image Notes
1. Crimp ferrule with wire stripper. Careful you don't damage your wire stripper.

Step 5: Prepare neck

Cut the threaded screw section off the end of your mop handle using a saw. Then make a notch in the bottom so the neck can sit securely on the lip of the tub.

Now to measure and the cut string: Put the notched end of the neck on the lip of the tub, as if you were playing it. Hold the unattached end of the string to the center of the tub with your hand. The string should be taught when the neck is perpendicular to the ground - find this length then make a mark 10 inches further down the cable (we need some slack to pass the string through the tub and loop it through the hardware). Cut the string using the disc sander bit on the dremel tool and strip off 10 inches of coating, similar to what we did to the other end of the string.

Image Notes
1. a notch in the bottom of the neck allows it to sit on the rim of the tub securely

Image Notes
1. holding the string in the center of the tub, as if it were attached. add ten inches to this length and cut.

Step 6: Prep tub

Drill a 3/32" hole in the center of your tub and jar lid. Remove the handles from the tub so they don't rattle when playing the instrument.

Now attach the string to the tub: Thread the cable through the tub, jar lid, and ferrules. Make sure your string is the correct length before securing the ferrules: test it by putting the neck in place and pulling lightly to determine exactly where the hardware should be attached on the stripped end of the cable.

This is the part of the instrument that will be pulled on the hardest, so I used two ferrules to increase the grip on the cable. Once you're confident about the string length, crimp the ferrules to secure a good grip on the cable.

Image Notes
1. you can pull these off with bare hands

Image Notes
1. looking at the washer and ferrules on the underside of the tub

Step 7: Attach capo and contact mic

The empty wire spool can slip over the top of the neck and past the connecting hardware. It can now be slid up and down along the string to change the pitch range of the instrument. The optional contact microphone will be placed between the tub and jar lid - a piece of tape will hold it in place. The contact mic adds lots of high-end tone to the instrument and allows you to play much louder, useful in performance situations. If the contact mic is squeaky try adding some Vaseline.

And that's it! The world is yours to rumble with tubby goodness. ENJOY.

Image Notes
1. sliding the spool capo up and down the neck to change the pitch range of the bass
2. instrument is being played amplified using the contact mic under the washer

Image Notes
1. contact microphone sits between the washer and the tub. hold this in place with a piece of tape.

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Acoustic Vulcan lyre

Published by agent036 on June 2, 2009

Author Bio: agent036   (author's website)

Hi, my name is Jason, and I'm am artist. That doesn't mean I get payed to do art, though I have, I just am. The medium isn't important, the mind set is. I love to learn new things and attempt to express ideas and emotions. I also happen to be a big geek. I love computers, roleplaying, scifi books, as well as actually scientific study. Most importantly though, I am a romantic. A dreamer. And I hope I continue to be one. I started this site because I've invested so much time learning and building things that I thought it'd be nice to share them with the world. I don't have any over arching plan for my studies. I have no musical or historical training what so ever. I just seem unable to stop learning and expanding my skills. Most of the stuff I study will never do me any good, but it makes me happy and my friends put up with my crazy shit so I guess that's alright.

Intro: Acoustic Vulcan lyre

The Vulcan Lyre, my ultimate testiment to nerdyness. The device one uses when you need to rock out with your Spock out. I must express my gratitude to Michelle my wonderful wife for her help with this project. That she works in a wood shop and knows her way around it has been extremely helpful.

I designed this to be as close in shape to the classic prop from Star Trek as I could, but to be acoustic rather than electric.
EDIT: Here's an MP3 of me playing this lyre
http://secretagent036.googlepages.com/v-lyre-1.mp3

EDIT 2: By popular demand I have added a schematic image with some dimensions. I didn't measure much of anything when I built it so i had to go measure the actual article to get these numbers.

Step 1: Basic Body

First I designed my lyre shape in a vector graphics program. While adobe illustrator would have made more sense I did it with 3d Studio Max, just cause I like how it handles curves. Technically we can shorten this step to "Draw your lyre".

Then I printed the whole thing out. My printer isn't any bigger than yours, so I had to print it out in sections and then tape it all together. Next I cut out the whole shape, taped it to a big piece of 3/4 inch plywood and cut the sucker out. If you are a better free hand drawer than me you could probably skip most of that and just draw on the plywood. I was trying to get mine as close in shape to Spock's as possible so I was a bit anal.

Next I made a copy of it with some more plywood, then glued the halves together with some clamps.

Oh, uh, see that little area at the bottom that isn't cut out? Yeah, that's important, it does stuff. Namely it gives to something to screw the tail piece to.

Step 2: Edges

The edges where rough, being made of cheap plywood, so I puttied them. Some simple off the shelf wood putty did this nicely.

Step 3: Front and Back

Next I got some 1/4 inch ply and cut out a pair of "pick guard" shapes for the front and back. Here I haven't glues them yet, just set them on the body to test the size.

Step 4: STAIN!

Yes, stain, bad for your clothes, but good for your Vulcan Lyre. Simple stuff really, just brush it on, wait 10 minutes or so, then wipe off the remainder. Then I glued the front and back on and cut a sound hole in the front panel.. Now it's starting to look cool.

Step 5: Figuring out where to put the strings and tuners.

So, by this point I hadn't actually measured anything, so I didn't see any reason to start now. My plan was to have a simple wooden bar tail piece, the strings going over a floating bridge, and going to tuners that went up the neck.

I wanted to sorta eye ball the placement, so I made a fake bridge and tail piece out of paper, taped some strings to it and taped every thing in place. When I had the strings placed evenly I marked the neck where I wanted to drill.

Step 6: Zither Pins

So I wanted a simple system to tune the strings, and a little research showed me that there is no simpler tuner in the universe than the zither pin. Just drill a hole with a 3/16 bit, and then screw the pin into the hole, done. You can turn the tuners with a clock key (also sold on the site where I got these).

Step 7: Finishing

I had a few pieces of oak lying around, so I cut the tail piece and bridge from them. The tail piece (which I completely over engineered, smaller next time) was just a block of wood with a dozen small holes drilled through one way and three slightly larger holes through the top.

There are fancier ways to mount a tail peice, and I'm sure someone knows them. I am a novice wood worker, so I decided to go with drywall screws. Yeah, I know, there's no drywall in this thing, but I swear these things work on everything.

The bridge is just a chunk of oak cut to form. It's held in place by the tension of the strings, so you need to get them a little tuned then sort of work the bridge underneath them.

For strings I chose acoustic guitar G strings. The geometry of the lyre can give you a pretty good tonal range, depending on what strings you choose. Heavier strings will generally give you lower notes and vice versa. I tuned mine to a major twelve note scale, you can play a lot using only major scale notes, but if you want a different scale you can always retune it.

I found that once the strings were broken in they keep a tune remarkably well. The whole thing warped a little over time but seems pretty stable. For the record, I went on to build a few more of these, and they both looked a lot better, but I sold them and forgot to get pictures. Oh well.

Oh, a note on string labeling, I had a little trouble sorting out the strings at first so I used markers to color the C strings red and the F strings blue, a system that I totally stole from Irish harps, that also works REALLY well for Vulcan Lyres. The marker rubs off after a while but I don't have to reapply very often.

I hope this has helped and or inspired you to build something cool.

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X-ray Drum Heads

Published by Thinkenstein on October 12, 2010

Author Bio: Thinkenstein   (author's website)

I'm a refugee from Los Angeles, living in backwoods Puerto Rico for about 35 years now and loving it. I built my own home from discarded nylon fishnet and cement.

Intro: X-ray Drum Heads

These bongo drums had rawhide heads which always seemed to sound a little dead, no matter how much I tightened them.   They are not real professional drums, for one thing, and aren't built for extreme tension.

With nothing much to lose, I replaced the rawhide heads with a couple of x-ray films the lab in town gave me to play with many years ago.  Free material! 

The sound was much improved.  To hear the new heads, click on the .mp3 file in the last step. 

Step 1: Cutting the Material

The first X-ray head that I made years ago was precisely laid out on paper first.  This time, I just traced the top of the drum directly on the film with a white grease pencil and improvised.  The process was faster. 

Rawhide stretches.  X-ray film does not, so the outside edge needs to be cut to allow sections to fold .

It would have been a little easier with longer tabs on the "sunburst", because the material tends to fight going where you want it to go later, and longer tabs are better than too-short ones.  These were cutting it a little close, but worked.  I had a larger film to cut for the second drum head, and left longer tabs.

Try to keep the sides of the tabs parallel, or narrowing a bit toward the outside, rather than having them widen.  If they get too wide, they will interfere with each other when they are bent into the holding rings.   

Step 2: The Holding Rings

The outer ring pushes down on the inner ring, using bolts to tighten it.   The drum head material is pinched between the two rings and is pulled down with them. 

Step 3: Folding the Tabs Down

As you try to get all the tabs to simultaneously go where they belong between the two rings, you will probably forfeit the wrestling match eventually.   To make things easier, you have to first coax the tabs to fold downward around the drum body. 

To do that, tape all the tabs down with masking tape and hold them with a rubber band.  Use a heat gun to make the material go limp.  Since all the tabs are taped down,  you won't see it go limp and you have to guess the amount of heating necessary.  Experiment with some scrap material first.  As soon as you remove the heat, it will cool and rigidify in its new position. 

In the absence of a heat gun, you might try a propane torch, but be very delicate with the heat.  The plastic is flammable.   Then again, you might be able to win the wrestling match with the tabs without heat, if you are a better wrestler than I am. 

Image Notes
1. Tape the tabs down first with masking tape and then use a rubber band to make sure they stay down.

Image Notes
1. Be careful with the heat gun. It doesn't take much time for the material to go limp. When it cools, it will keep its limp form. Experiment on some scrap material first.

Image Notes
1. After removing the tape and rubber band, the tabs are more cooperative.

Step 4: Getting the Head Material between the Rings

This step is a little tricky.  You have to bend the tabs up and over the inner ring and then tape the tabs to the top of the drum head.   Leave some slack, enough so that the rings will end up lower than the top of the drum body when the head is tensioned.  If they stick up above the top of the drum body, you will bang your hands on them when you play. 

After you get the outer ring in place and it starts to pull down on the drum head, you can un-tape the tabs, if you wish.  The tabs shouldn't pop out, and some may need to be tightened by hand, or allowed to pull out a little for even tension on all tabs. 

Image Notes
1. The outer ring pulls everything tight.

Step 5: Trim Excess Tab Material

After you set the tension, the tabs are going nowhere and you can trim off the extra tab material.  Cut it below the top of the drum body so that your hands never feel it when you are playing. 

Unlike rawhide heads, the synthetic heads don't need to have their tension released when the drum is in storage.  It may stretch a little, but not much.  

If rawhide heads dry out while stored under tension, the heads shrink and can tear, which is not a pretty thing to see.  The plastic doesn't dry out or shrink. 

Image Notes
1. Being careful not to cut anything but the tab ends, use scissors to trim them down below the top of the drum body. Cut them short, so your hand never feels them when you play.

Step 6: Hear the Sound

To hear the sound of the new bongo drum heads, click on the thumbnail icon below to open the .mp3 audio file.  (It looks like a blank piece of paper with the corner folded over.)

A playing tip:  If the drum has a little more ring to the sound than you like, you can deaden it some by stretching a rubber band from one tension bolt to another, across the top of the head. 

Enjoy. 

BONGO.mp3471 KB

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How to build a cajon

Published by 89joho87 on March 1, 2009

Author Bio: 89joho87   (author's website)

Hi! I'm a guy who find it's cool to create things!

Intro: How to build a cajon

A Cajon is a common instrument in South America. It is often related to flamenco music/ samba.But you can use it just as a real drum with a guitar for accompany. When you play the cajon, you are sitting on it an drumming with your hands on the front side of the drum. You can find out a whole technics and learning stuff if you just search on cajon drumming on youtube for example.

In this instructable I will tell you how I builded my Cajon!

Step 1: The construction

I looked up a whole bunch of sites on how to build cajons on google. There were plenty of people who had nice instructions on how they builded there cajons. But i decided to create one from a construction i found on Orcana Artesania* . It was an easy instruction except it was in Spanish but I did only use the measurements. Instead of having guitar strings in it I bought a snare drum wire that i put in it.

*Link : http://www.ocanartesania.com/

This is the parts of the box and the measurements: (see the PDF file)

construccion-aleman.pdf(612x792) 462 KB

Step 2: Building the drum

The building of the drum box was quite easy. I used plywood as material. For the frontside I used a thinner type of plywood like 3 mm thick. Then i cutted out the parts. I used a circle saw. For the hole I first drilled a small hole then I used a jigsaw to cut out the larger hole. When I had all the parts I used screws/nails and glue to put all the parts together except the front side. The front side i used smaller screws and no glue. The thing is that if you use screws it is useful for tension of the drum surface. Before I screw the frontside I fixed the snare drum wire inside it. It was the trickiest part. I had an idea that I stole from another building site I found. I had two thin iron boards that held the plastic tape of the snare wire. Then i had one screw in the middle of the two boards that I drilled a hole for to the outside of the drum*. When it was done I put the frontside in its place.

*See picture

Step 3: The finished drum!

This is the finished drum!

Look at the pictures! =)

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DIY Kids Sand Block Instruments

Published by yankeelandy on January 25, 2010

Intro: DIY Kids Sand Block Instruments

My wife recently purchase a set of wooden sand block instruments from a teachers supply store to use with her kids music group. Unfortunately, at $5 a pop she did not have a budget to get blocks for every child she works with.

Materials Used:

3/4" MDF(I had some extra pieces around 3 1/2" in width, but you could use any width that you think a child will be able to hold).

100 grit sand paper (to make the edges of the MDF less sharp)

60 git sand paper (glued on the blocks to make the noise)

Varathane Interior Wood Finish (so that the paint will not come off in you need to lightly wash the blocks)

Tempera Paint (powdered or pre mix)

Contact Cement

Small Paint Brush

Circular Saw

Image Notes
1. Our finished blocks

Image Notes
1. This is on of the store bought blocks we modeled our design off of.

Step 1: Cut blocks and sand edges

The blocks we purchased were 2"x5", however I had some spare MDF pieces 3 1/2" wide so our final dimension were 5" x 3 1/2".

I used a circular saw to cut the pieces to length and 100 grit sand paper to take off any sharp corners or edges; sanding for only 30-60 seconds per edge.

Image Notes
1. Non-Sanded Edges
2. Sanded Edges

Step 2: Paint each pair of blocks

We used 3 coats of tempera paint letting each coat dry for 30 minutes.

Image Notes
1. purchased from http://www.scholarschoice.ca/

Image Notes
1. The paint soaked through the paper towel and stuck to our dining room table. Use newspaper instead.

Step 3: Apply 3 coats of wood finish

The varnish is pretty sticky, so just be careful when turning over the block. We used paper towel under each block, but in retrospect a couple layers of newspaper would  have been better.

Step 4: Cut out sand paper and cement to blocks

We cut our pieces of 60 git sand paper slightly smaller than the blocks, about 1/8" smaller on each side. This gave a bit of room for the extra cement to be squished out from under each sheet and smeared around the edges. No real reason for this....but at this point, the fumes were starting to get to us.

Make that the edges stay flush to the blocks as some of the sand paper will tend to no stay glued to the block while drying.

That's it!  Time to make some noise!

Image Notes
1. Our finished blocks

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Styrofoam Harps

Published by Thinkenstein on October 16, 2010

Author Bio: Thinkenstein   (author's website)

I'm a refugee from Los Angeles, living in backwoods Puerto Rico for about 35 years now and loving it. I built my own home from discarded nylon fishnet and cement.

Intro: Styrofoam Harps

Professional harps are cool instruments, but expensive and difficult to play.   These may be toy instruments, but they still sound nice and have possible uses in the creation of music.  With maracas and drums I could imagine some fun jamming with these. 

The instruments are feather weight.   I don't know how child-proof they might be, but I am tempted to find out.  I think these would be great learning tools for introducing children to string instruments. 

All four sides of the harps can be played.  Each side has a slightly varied selection of notes.  The strings are not tunable, but there is a general progression from low to high notes.  

Be sure to listen to the .mp3 audio file in the last step to hear how they sound. 

Image Notes
1. Alternate rows of fish line and rubber bands.

Step 1: Shaping the Foam

I made two harps with differences in length.  The long one uses only mono-filament nylon fish line, which is next to invisible in the photos.  The short one alternates fish line with rubber bands.  The rubber bands give the notes interesting overtones. 

The harps are basically Styrofoam triangles cut out of a thick sheet of the material.    That gives a variety of string lengths, and a variety of notes.  The longer strings make lower notes. 

The strings make contact with the body only on the edges, which are protected by half-pipes of 1/2 " CPVC pipe (smallest size for hot water use).  On the face of each side, between the pipes, I hollowed out the foam some, to give the strings more clearance for movement.  If the strings touch anything while they vibrate, it results in a buzzing sound. 

Image Notes
1. The pipe is split in half, length-wise. The half pipe covers the corner of the foam, preventing the strings from digging into the foam.

Image Notes
1. Notice the curve. The faces on each side are hollowed out some to give the strings more clearance from the body.

Step 2: The Nail String Guides

1 1/2" nails are driven through slightly tight holes in the pipe edge protectors into the Styrofoam block.  Leave the heads sticking up some, as they are used to anchor the fish line that spirals around the instrument. 

If you plan to alternate rows of fish line and rubber bands, make sure you don't get carried away and wrap fish line where the rubber bands go, too.  If strings touch while vibrating, the resulting sound is not as clean. 

I wrapped the fish line by hand, stretching it as tight as I could.  It may stretch and get lower in tone over time, eventually needing re-stringing.  Fish line is cheap.

Image Notes
1. The pipe is split in half, length-wise. The half pipe covers the corner of the foam, preventing the strings from digging into the foam.

Image Notes
1. Holes, a little on the tight side are drilled for 1 1/2" nails.

Image Notes
1. The nails stick out above the pipe corner protectors. One long piece of fish line spirals around the instrument, going from nail to nail. I wrapped it around each nail twice before going on to the next nail.
2. I pried this section of edge protecting pipe up for this photograph. The nails are driven through the edge protectors while they are in place, not before, as this photo might suggest.

Image Notes
1. Two slits in the ends of the corner pipe help hold the line while you tie off the end with a knot.

Step 3: Stretching the Fish Line

Start at one end and spiral wrap the instrument with a continuous length of fish line.  Since the line only wraps twice around each nail, and is not tied firmly, I imagine that there will be some slippage of the line throughout its length as the instrument is played, resulting in approximately equal tension on each string.  Then, the differences in length should provide the progression of notes. 

When you wrap the fish line, wrap it as tightly as you can by hand.  Do not release tension with your hands until you reach the end and have it tied off securely.  If it slips before tie-off, you may have to go back and wind it all over again from the beginning to regain the tension. 

I used two slits cut in the ends of the corner protectors to begin and end the line winding.  The slits help hold the line tension while I tied the knots.

Step 4: Hear the Harps

Click on the thumbnail icon below to open an .mp3 audio file and hear how the harps sound.  The icon looks like a blank piece of paper with the corner folded over. 

I hope you enjoy this cheap, but pleasant sounding instrument.   It's fun to play. 

STYROFOAM HARPS.mp31 MB

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Styrofoam Maracas

Published by Thinkenstein on October 12, 2010

Author Bio: Thinkenstein   (author's website)

I'm a refugee from Los Angeles, living in backwoods Puerto Rico for about 35 years now and loving it. I built my own home from discarded nylon fishnet and cement.

Intro: Styrofoam Maracas

These may look like baseball bats, but they are musical instruments -- maracas. 

Maracas get their sound from many loose objects, such as seeds, inside a hollow container (such as a gourd).  It is usually on a stick handle. 

These maracas are not better or worse than others -- just different. 

The tops have been hollowed out and small containers of seeds have been placed inside them.   Variations in the seeds used and/or the containers for them make variations in the sound.  In the absence of maraca seeds, try beans, rice, popcorn, BB's, etc. 

The foam not only acts as a handle, but it can also be used as a sort of drum stick, for tapping against one's body, or other objects to get that sound as an overlay on the maraca sound.  

In the last step, you can hear the sound they make. 

Step 1: Shaping the Styrofoam

I started off with a big piece of 4 inch-thick Styrofoam I purchased years ago from a refrigeration supply store.  (I use Styrofoam a lot in sculpture, for one thing.)

I cut the basic shape out with a hand saw first, and then touched it up with a course file and sandpaper.  It is very easy to shape. 

Beware of the little flakes of Styrofoam that will land on the floor and blow all over the place, if you let them.  I work indoors where there is no breeze and catch them in a big plastic box as they fall.   I mix the foam "sawdust" with cement later, as a filler material, and use it in sculpture. 

One could decorate the Styrofoam, I suppose, to make it prettier.  I don't mind bare bones functionality in this case.  The sound is more important to me than the looks. 

Image Notes
1. Scraps after cutting the maracas from a big piece of foam.
2. The tip has been sawed off, prior to hollowing out a space for the seed container.

Step 2: The Seeds

There is a plant here called "maraca" that, surprisingly enough, produces maraca seeds.  The instrument apparently took its name from the maraca seeds that were traditionally used to fill it.   They are hard and round little seeds, like BB's. 

I put the seeds in a plastic film can (In this digital world, are they antiques yet?), and buried the can inside the foam by cutting off the top and drilling a hole with a wood bit.  After placing the can in the hole, a little wood glue stuck the top back on again.   I held it temporarily with masking tape until the glue dried. 

Step 3: Hear the Maracas

Click the thumbnail icon below (looks like a blank piece of paper with the corner bent over), to open the .mp3 audio file. 

I hope you enjoy hearing the Styrofoam maracas 

MARACA.mp3451 KB

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A Rule Organ

Published by SteevAtBlueDust on September 6, 2007

Intro: A Rule Organ

By taping thirteen rulers to a desk, each with a different amount of overhang, we have a rudimentary musical (?!?!?!?) instrument. So, how much overhang is necessary, how do we do it, and why? Well...

If there's one piece of science that every kid knows, it's that twanging a ruler on the edge of the desk makes a noise, and by changing the amount of overhang will change the pitch. Give anyone a new ruler, and the first thing they'll do is twang it, to see how it sounds. This is an interesting fact of life.

To intellectualise this pastime we can say that we are discovering the relationship between wavelength and frequency (the longer the ruler overhang, the lowest the frequency of the note), and that we're listening for the timbre (pronounced tam-ber), which indicates the character of an individual sound, and is why a violin and piano sound different when playing the same note. This is less interesting fact of life.

Step 1: Prepare the rules

We start by determining the length of each overhang. By knowing how much is needed for the lowest note, C in our case, we can calculate the others mathematically. Finding the lowest note is done in typical school kid fashion by experimenting, unless you have a keyboard, guitar, or other musical instrument and an extra pair of hands, er, to hand.

You will notice that some lengths do not produce notes at all. Very short distances just produce a click, while very long ones make no sound at all. To make a complete octave, the overhang of the lowest note will need to be twice as long as the shortest (highest note), so if the rules you're using only make sounds between 5cm and 8cm you won't get a full octave.

TIP: Hold the rule to the desk as tightly as possible to produce the best audio fidelity (read: twang) possible.

Step 2: Setting the rules lengths

Taking the lowest note as a guide, measure the distance from the edge of the table to the tip of the rule. This is not, alas, the distance marked on the rule as most have a gap at each end. You will need to measure this. Taking this total distance, divide it by 1.0594630943592952645618252949463 to compute the overhang of the next rule. Oh, you want that number explaining? Ok!

Musical frequency is a logarithmic scale. The frequency of each note on an instrument is always half the frequency of the note one octave above it. That is, a=2f. So, with 12 notes to an octave, we raise 2 to the power of 1/12 to get our multiplier, 1.0594630943592952645618252949463.You can create very interesting, weird, and ethereal music by using different scales, but rules are not good enough to reproduce it, but it can be done effectively with soft synths. But I digress...

So, if your first rule (as the lowest note, on the left) overhangs by 104mm, the next must overhang by 98mm. Line this up with the edge of the rule - remembering that there's probably a 7mm gap between the edge of the rule and the numbers, so measure off 91mm and tape this rule to the desk.

Note - Number - Length (with 7mm gap considered)

C (low) - 0 - 9.700000
C#/Db - 1 - 9.116292
D - 2 - 8.565346
D#/Eb - 3 - 8.045321
E - 4 - 7.554484
F - 5 - 7.091195
F#/Gb - 6 - 6.653909
G - 7 - 6.241165
G#/Ab - 8 - 5.851588
A - 9 - 5.483875
A#/Bb - 10 - 5.136801
B - 11 - 4.809206
C (hi) - 12 - 4.499997

You can make a smaller C-scale rule organ, by only using the lengths highlighted in bold.

The method I found best for lining up the rules was to place tape on the edge of the desk, so that the base of the rule stuck to it at the correct distance. Then, once all the rules where laid, I securely fastened them from above, removed this strip, and inserted double-sided tape underneath. It's also easiest to work from the left, as this means the first edge you fix to the tape has the millimetre scale on it.

NOTE: Never tape to varnished desk, as the tape will remove the varnish.

Step 3: Weighting

Once all the rules are taped in the place, place some heavy books (or your other hand) on top to ensure the tape doesn't break and the rules fly up and hit you in the face. It also helps the sound quality. I also added stickers (cut from a video cassette label) to the notes of the C major scale (c,d,e,f,g,a,b, and c) to guide me in performance. You can use a rule of a different colour for this, but the timbre is usually significantly different between makes.

Taken from Rule organ details

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Build Your Own Marimba and Wrap Your Own Mallets!

Published by RocketScientist on July 22, 2008

Intro: Build Your Own Marimba and Wrap Your Own Mallets!

Let me start by explaining where and from whom I got help. I used this website to get some basic information on how wide and long to cut the marimba bars. In fabrication I got help from one family member who helped rough cut some of the bars. The rest is all my work.

I am a mallet percussionist who loves the marimba. About four years ago I had a problem. Though I loved percussion, I had no way of practicing at home. There were cheap options. I could have bought a bell kit. But I hate the sounds they make. I wanted a very large five octave marimba but didn't have the money to simply purchase one (7000+ dollars). So I decided against all common sense I would build one.

The goal: build a five octave marimba, without spending a fortune. Use whatever supplies are available to keep the cost low. (The keys are made from an oak tree which was struck by lightning several years ago!)

I hope this instructable will inspire others but I want to give a word of warning. This is an extremely ambitious project and will likely takes a year or two for the average individual (like me) to complete.

Some notes about the included audio recording:
The marimba was playing using the same mallet across the entire five octave range. for this reason, the mallet I chose was a little too hard for the lowest note, and a little too soft for the highest note.

C Scale Arpeggios Across the Instrument.aiff2 MB

Step 1: Materials

By all means, get creative! Use whatever materials you might have laying around to complete this project and don't be afraid to borrow power tools from your neighbor. Before you rush out to Lowe's think first and make sure you couldn't use something else instead. As you can probably imagine, the total cost of the project will be heavily dependent on the builder's creativity and the availability of supplies. However I can tell you I managed to construct my marimba with less than 200 dollars.

For now let me just state the basic components of a marimba and the materials you will need.

The Bars - this is where everything begins. The bars can be made from nearly any material, but to qualify as a marimba it must be wood. Feel free to experiment with different types of wood before construction. But it is important for the wood to be completely dried out (not green at all). My oak material came from a tree which was struck by lightning.

The Frame - for me, this was the next step after building the bars. The frame can be made from anything. This includes wood or even steel. Use whatever you are comfortable with.

The Resonators - Nothing difficult here. Though anodized aluminum is very pretty PVC pipe works just as well.

Those are the basic parts of a marimba but you will also need some specialty equipment.

Musical Tuner - How much you invest in a tuner will be reflected in your marimba. If you just want something to practice with (like me) then a 30 dollar tuner will do just fine. Otherwise, if you want to tune overtones, use a strobe tuner (300+ dollars).

Belt Sander - You will be using this a lot so get something comfortable.

Drill - You will need to drill holes through the width of the bars for the marimba string. I suggest a drill press but a hand drill will work just fine.

Table Saw - for making all those cuts.

Band Saw - not essential but recommended if you will be cutting bass notes.

Miter Saw - really handy with the frame and resonators

Step 2: Cutting the Bars

Preparation - What you want? Do you want one octave, or five? Is your instrument going to be pentatonic or chromatic? Once you know what notes you want I suggest you look at this website . I would suggest using the dimensions of an evenly graduated marimba. This will make the frame easier to build.

By the way, a higher pitch marimba will require much less sanding and can be finished relatively quickly.

Once you have your goal and dimensions in mind, use a table saw cut the wood. try to keep the grain running the length of the bar and avoid big knots in the center of the bar. If it looks nice it will likely sound nice. At this stage you're only aiming for a brick like shape. Don't worry if it is a little rough.

Don't worry about tuning the bars yet. That comes next.

Step 3: Tuning the Bars

Before you begin take a moment to find the nodes of each bar. The nodes are the points which vibrate the least when the center of the bar is struck. The curve of the marimba bar should be between these two nodes. It might be helpful to make a few guidelines with a pencil or sharpie. Finally, if you want to stain or varnish do so now before you begin tuning. If all this terminology is going over your head, look at that website I told you about.

Once you are ready use a belt sander to begin removing mass in small increments. Feel free to smooth out the surfaces and add any artistic effects you may desire. Periodically, check your progress with the chromatic tuner. You can do this by holding the bar approximately at one of the nodes and striking the center. As you remove mass, the bar's frequency will decrease. If you are tuning a bass note I suggest you cut a chunk out of the bottom first. This should be done with a band saw and will make sanding a lot faster.

It is important not to sand too much too fast. If you do, the bar will heat up. The change in temperature will affect the tone produced. So when tuning the notes try to keep the temperature consistently around room temperature.

If you make a mistake and sand too much (making the note flat) don't worry it can be fixed. I found the simplest way was to trim the ends of the bar, making the length shorter. 1/8 of an inch goes a long way.

As previously discussed keep in mind temperature will have a great impact on each bars frequency. Just try to keep an "optimum operating temperature" in mind. Mine sounds great at 80 degrees Fahrenheit. But it is twenty cents sharp at 50 degrees.

Step 4: Tuning the Overtones

An Instructables community member (thank you luvtheteddie) had a few questions on how to tune the overtones. My advice seemed to help so I'm adding that information here.

OK... To tune the overtones you will need one of two things,

A. Strobe Tuner
B. Audio Spectrum Analyzer

I suggest the Strobe Tuner especially if you are a musician. Personally I consider Peterson Strobe Tuners to be the best and they also make a Strobe Tuner app for the Iphone/Itouch. I only included the Spectrum Analyzer to give you an alternative.

Yes you can tune the fundamental frequencies and the overtones of all bars just by shaping the undercut of the bar.
Before we get into how to shape the curve, let's review the proper ratios between the overtones. For Marimba and Vibraphone builders it is 1:4:9.88. For Xylophone builders it is 1:3:6.

Now, to tune the overtones you should follow the template in the pictures below.
To tune the Fundamental frequency (1), sand in the center.
To tune the second overtone (4), sand just outside the center
To tune the third (9.88), sand close to the ends of the arc.

Now here is where it gets tricky...Changing one overtone, will change the frequencies of the other two!
For this reason, you have to first get the ratios between frequencies correct, and then sand evenly across the curve until you arrive at the fundamental (hopefully with the ratios intact.)

If you mess up and tune something too low, you cannot (to my knowledge) fix the problem without reducing the length of the bar.

Additionally, you will notice the overtones become increasingly more difficult to tune as you begin to work with higher and higher notes. This is because the sample size/duration/sustain of the higher notes become shorter and shorter. This also makes the overtones more difficult to hear. So do you want to tune the overtones of the upper register? I don't know. You'll just have to play it by ear. (I'm sorry... couldn't resist a bad pun)

Optional:
I highly recommend you read this research article:
Nonuniform Beams with Harmonically Related Overtones for use in Percussion Instruments
by Felipe Orduna-Bustamante
published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
December 1991

Step 5: Building the Frame

So...Several splinters later and your all finished tuning the notes you want on your instrument. Now you need to build a frame to hold the keys.

This is a time to get creative. There are only a few rules to a marimba frame so as long as you abide by those rules; you don't need to worry about how the frame might affect the quality of sound produced by the instrument. And those rules are...

1. The bars must be supported by "marimba string".
2. The string must be supported by braces in between the marimba keys. (Next step.)
3. The frame will also hold your resonators. (if you choose to build them).

Bear those three rules and facts of a marimba frame in mind as you craft it and you should be fine. I suggest you lay out your tuned keys on a large flat surface to get the dimensions for your frame.
You should also consider how high you want the playing surface to be off the ground.

Note in the pictures the frame follows the path of the bars and the string that will later run through the instrument.

Step 6: Adding String Supports

The marimba string supports are essential because they provide a level playing surface. You will need a lot of these, but fortunately they can be easy to make if you can find the materials.

I suggest aluminum rods. Use a band saw to cut the rods to an appropriate length. They should be long enough to accommodate your thickest bar. You will need to split one end of each support to so the string can lay in it. I suggest mounting each rod in a vice grip and using a hack saw to split the aluminum. Then use a screw driver and a good old fashioned hammer to open up the supports into a nice "Y" shape.

If you are recycling some old aluminum like I did, you may need to put a coat of paint on them so they all look uniform.

Finally to mount the supports into the frame you will need to drill holes into the frame at the appropriate intervals for the supports. Your drill bit should be a little small than your supports. Once done, return to the screwdriver and hammer to coerce the supports into their new home.

Notice in second picture below you can see a nylon string running though the braces. This should give you an idea of how it all fits.

Step 7: Stringing the Bars

Don't give up yet! You're almost ready to play a tune! You've got a frame and keys, now you need marimba string. You could use some professionally made marimba string, or you could do what I did and use climbing rope. Yep! It works great! But whatever string you decide to use, make sure you drill holes in the bars large enough to accommodate your choice.

These holes should be drilled through the nodes of each bar. (Again, you can find the nodes by figuring out where the bar vibrates least when you strike it in the center.) Also, you should drill the holes on each bar an equal distance from the playing surface. If you don't you won't get a level surface.

Once you're done, that's it! Play a tune! Be happy with yourself! But it you want to go the extra mile, carry forth to the next step.

Step 8: Resonators

This is actually the easiest and maybe quickest part of the build. Resonators will make your instrument a lot louder and give the bars a much more "full" and "warm" sound. All that is required is a little understanding of physics.

The material for the resonators can be almost anything. Just look for something that will hold water without leaking. That is essentially what you're doing. For me, PVC pipe works great. You will need the tubing and plastic test caps.

Now for some physics! Don't worry this is really simple.
L = 340/ (4f)
Length (in meters) is equal to the speed of sound divided by the quantity of four times the frequency of the note.

Frequency is measured in Hertz. You should use your mad Google-ing skills and look up the frequencies of your notes if you don't already know them.

I suggest you cut your resonators a little longer than you need. Trim off a little at a time, and hold it under the correct bar as you play it. When it sounds good and full, you're done with that resonator. Relax. This doesn't take that long and you won't make an extremely costly mistake.

Exactly how you mount your resonators under your bars us up to you. You just need to get them there. Don't be afraid to drill screws into your resonators to hold them (if you choose to do things that way). The resonators will still resonate. If you are making resonators for bass notes, you can curve and bend your resonators to fit under the instrument. Of course the beauty of PVC is you can buy PVC joints that are already bent.

Step 9: You're finally done!!!

If you have actually done this, congratulations! If you were a thrifty and smart engineer/musician, then you have successfully created a pretty decent practice instrument for significantly less than you could have bought one.

So go get started and play something "epic" to celebrate your success.

Ah but wait! Perhaps you have no mallets to work with. If this is the case continue forth!

Step 10: Malllet Wrapping Parts and Materials

In terms of parts, you will need a mallet stick and core.
The stick should be made of wood. The material for the core is up to you.

Materials

3/8 inch dowel rod (3/8 is just my personal preference. Use whatever is most comfortable.)
Round Core (In the pictures following, I use a "bouncy ball" I bought in the Grocery Store for 25 cents.)
Yarn
Needle (a relatively big one)
Scissors

Some notes on the Core
You have a lot of options here. The material for the core will have the largest impact on the tone produced. A hard core like a wooden crafts ball will work well for the upper ranges of a marimba, but will sound horrible on the lower ranges. For a relatively soft core, I've found "bouncy balls" or rubber balls are the best bet.

Step 11: Assembling the Stick and Core

You should drill a hole in the core to allow for the stick. Be careful not to drill all the way through the core. To make things a little easier, I suggest you seat the core in some vice grips.

Once you have a hole, use some wood glue or epoxy to connect the core to the stick.

Step 12: Cut the Stick and Sand the Edges

Wait! Why didn't we cut the stick first and then glue it in place?
Nothing wrong with that. It is just my personal preference to do it this way.
Otherwise I'm never really sure long to cut the stick to make it even with the other mallets.

Once the mallet is cut to length, take it to a sander and remove those uncomfortable 90 degree angles.

Step 13: Wrapping the Mallet

The mallet is sanded to be comfortable; the glue/epoxy has dried; now you're ready to start wrapping.

Start by tying a knot just below the core. Then, begin wrapping over the top, and then under.

Over, Under, Over, Under....

Be sure to count the number of wraps around the mallet. If you want a set of mallets to sound the same, the number of wraps must be equal. Each time the yarn crosses the top of the mallet, that's one wrap. If you're still confused about this, watch the YouTube video.

The mallets I'm wrapping here will have 100 wraps each.

Step 14: Crowning and Finishing the Mallet

OK. To end the seemingly never ending process of wrapping, you need to cut about an arm's length of yarn between the mallet head and the yarn you are wrapping with. (Let me specify this is still a single strand of yarn beginning with the knot you tied and ending at the point you just cut.)

Tie the free end of the yarn to your needle.

Now to crown the top and bottom of the mallet. I prefer starting with the top.
You need to push the needle in (at an angle) at the top of the mallet, and pull it out.
Do this over and over, going in a circle around the mallet head. This process makes sure your hard work won't come unraveled soon.

Once you finish with the top, the same needs to be done at the bottom.

After you're finished, I suggest crowning once more at the top, but this time you will tie a knot there. (As in the pictures.) Don't worry too much about the knot. I've wrapped several sets of mallets and only once have I had this knot come undone.

Step 15: Some Examples

These are all mallets I have wrapped myself. I prefer wrapping my mallets as opposed to buying professional mallets because I have control over color, weight, core material, overall length, and so on and so forth.

And if you are curious about the white/black mallets, I used yarn which transitions between the two colors. In other words, those white/black mallets are wrapped with one continuous stand, not two.

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The Minty Kalimba

Published by Deansrds on June 11, 2009

Author Bio: Deansrds

I become obsessed really easily, so weekend projects are the perfect thing for me! Once I start, I can't stop. I LOVE TINKERING!

Intro: The Minty Kalimba

My quest for the perfect portable musical instrument has led me to attempt my own creation. Over the years I have indulged myself with the likes of harmonicas, kazoos, and ukuleles in pursuit of the tiny and versatile. Thus I have created a new addition to my portable, quirky, arsenal of sound... The Minty Kalimba.

Due to the obsession of the Instructable community with the deliciously designed Altoids tin, naturally, I incorporated one in the construction of the Kalimba.

Check out the video right down here to see how it sounds! Sorry for the awful visual quality. I think you'll get the idea regardless:

Step 1: Materials

The whole project shouldn't cost much more than the price of a tin of Altoids. I just improvised in terms of materials and you may find that you have some stuff lying around the house that would work better than what I used.

You'll need:

1 x Altoids Tin
~1/2 foot of 1/8th inch Steel Bar
1x 1.75" Length of 3/8" Brass Tube
1 x old/broken Rake you are willing to mutilate
2 x 1 inch Machine Screws with nuts and washers (Look around and see what you have)
1 x Inquisitive Mind

OPTIONAL (to make electric):

1 Small Piezoelectric Buzzer from RadioShack
1 1/4" Audio Input Socket

Step 2: Making the Keys

Okay, so you have your old Rake in hand. Now, were going to try and destroy as little of this Rake as possible, so you won't drown in dead leaves next Autumn.

Step 1:

Cut the outermost finger of the Rake off at the base. I used a hacksaw, but you might be able to use some heavy duty tin snips if you don't have a saw.

Step 2:

Cut the single Rake finger into four, equally lengthed sections. The length I used was the exact distance between the sides of the gold border on the tin. The approximate length is 3 1/4" .

Step 3:

Remove any paint or rust from the Rake sections. I did this by soaking the keys in nail polish remover for a couple hours because I didn't have any turpentine on hand. This step is more for aesthetic purposes than anything.

Step 4:

Using a bench grinder, or hand held grinder, round, and dull the end of the key you will be playing with your thumbs. It might be a good idea to dull the other side too in order to reduce the risk of cutting yourself on the jagged edge.

Now you have the keys for the Kalimba!

Step 3: Preparing the Tin

Step 1:

Eat all the mints in the box. Now take some Peptobismal because your stomach is killing you.

Step 2:

You have to drill two holes in the lid of the tin for the machine screws to pass through. The holes should be spaced as follows:

1st hole- 3/4" from the bottom side of the tin and 5/8" over from the left side of the tin.
2nd hole- 3/4" from the top side of the tin and 5/8" over from the left side of the tin.

The holes should be a tiny bit wider than the machine screws you are using.

Step 4: Making the Key Vice

The vice is the part of the Kalimba that connects the keys to the resonating box (the tin). The way it is constructed allows for unobstructed vibration of the keys and thus SOUND .

Step 1:

Using a hacksaw or coldsaw, cut two 1 3/4" lengths of the 1/8" round bar.

Step 2:

Now, cut a 1 3/4" length of the 3/8" brass tube.

Step 3:

Place your cut 3/8" tube in a vice or clamp it down some other way. It's time to drill the two holes in the tube for the machine screws. Drill straight down through the tube. The middle of both holes should be exactly 1/2" away from each end of the tube. This allows for even spacing of the keys (two in between the screws and two on the outside of the screws). Make sure the drill bit you use is a little bit wider than the machine screws you are using so that you don't have to force the screws through. This is all approximate so make sure that the holes you drill in the tube line up with the holes you drilled in the lid of the tin.

Step 5: Putting the Whole Thing Together!

Now that you have all your parts made (keys, tin with holes, and vice) you can finally put the whole thing together and hear what it sounds like. It may take a bit of fiddling in order to make it so all the the pieces fit together snuggly.

Step 1:

Put together the top rod and machine screws. Thread the machine screws through both the holes in the 3/8" brass tube and the holes in the tin itself. Put on the washers underneath the tin and then put on the nuts. Keep the whole part as loose as possible because we'll need to have room for the keys and the 1/8" rod underneath this component.

Step 2:

Sit the two 1/8" rods about half an inch apart from each other, equadistant from the holes in the tin.

Step 3:

Tighten the machine screws until the top tube is about a quarter of an inch above the bottom two bars.

Step 4:

Slide the ends of the keys into the space between the bars. This is the part that requires a bit of fiddling in order to make sure everything is square. This is the time to figure out what notes you want your keys to have. The note played all depends on the length of the key. The longer the key, the lower the note and vice versa. Before you tighten the vice completely you can slide the keys in and out to change the pitch.

Step 5:

Tighten the screws until the keys are firmly locked in place.

Step 6: ELECTRIFYING!!!!!!!

You'll notice that your shiny new Altoids Tin Kalimba isn't very loud. We can fix that and it'll only cost you a couple of bucks.

Step 1:

You'll need to drill two more holes in your tin. The first one is for the 1/4" Audio socket. I decided to put it at the playing end of the Kalimba. So drill a 3/8" hole in the middle of the short side of the tin.

Step 2:

Drill a hole exactly opposite the hole just made on the other side of the tin. This will be where you put your On/Off switch. The size of your hole depends on how big the switch you have is. Mine fit through the 1/8" hole I drilled in the side.

Step 3:

Push the threaded part of both the switch and the Audio Input through their respective holes from the inside of the tin. Now screw on the nuts that came with either on so that the walls of the tin are sandwiched between the parts and the nuts.

Step 4:

Get out your soldering iron and that wire you collected. Now take the piezoelectric buzzer you got and solder the red wire to one of the legs on the Audio Input. Be care not to wire it to the ground (the leg that doesn't look like the other two). Now solder the black wire on the buzzer to the middle leg of the switch. Then, cut a shortish length of wire and solder one end to the other leg on the Audio Input and solder the other end onto one of the outside legs on the switch.

Step 5:

Tape the buzzer to the inside of the tin facing upwards. Close the tin. Plug into any amplifier via 1/4" cable and presto, you are rockin out on an electric Kalimba!!!!! Enjoy!

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How to Make Bagpipes out of a Garbage Bag and Recorders

Published by wasabi32746 on May 31, 2009

Intro: How to Make Bagpipes out of a Garbage Bag and Recorders

This instructable is how to make a simple bagpipe like instrument out of basic household materials. Granted, it does not sound all too much like a bagpipe, but it works similarly and is fun to mess around with.

Step 1: Basic construction of bagpipes

At the most basic level, bagpipes have 4 parts:

A bag to hold the air
A blowpipe to blow air into the bag
A chanter to play a melody
And a drone which plays a constant note

Step 2: Materials

1 Garbage Bag or large plastic bag
2 Recorders (or 2 PVC Recorders:http://www.instructables.com/id/PVC-Recorder/ )
2 Pens (You can also use a decent sized straw or a piece of hose)
Scissors
Tape

Step 3: Make the blowpipe

To make the blowpipe out of pens, just take the pens apart and tape them together.

Step 4: Trim the Bag

We wont be needing an entire garbage bag, so trim it down some, maybe 3/4 the size of a regular garbage bag.

Step 5: Attach blowpipe to bag

Tape the blowpipe to one side of the open bag. I like to put the blowpipe in a good inch or two into the bag to make sure no air escapes.

Go ahead and tape up 1/4 of the open part of the bag too.

Step 6: Attach The drone

Take one recorder, which will act as the drone, and tape it near 1/4 of the bag length down from the blowpipe. Make sure you do not cover up the whistle part of the recorder and that the mouthpiece is in the bag.

Go ahead and close up the rest of the open part of the bag, making it airtight.

Step 7: Attach the chanter

Cut a hole in the corner of the bag that is on the same side as the blowpipe.

Attach the other recorder to the hole and this will act as the chanter.

Step 8: Modify the drone

Tape up some holes on the drone to make it sound like how you want it to. This is the part that plays a constant note, so try to make it a note that doesn't make you want to find earplugs. Covering up all the holes works the best I think.

Step 9: Have Fun

Go ahead and play with your new bagpipes. Look for videos on the internet to learn how to play, the main difference is you play the chanter like a recorder. Check for any leaks and fix them with tape.

The bagpipe in the video looks a bit different because I made it larger than the one I did in the instructable, I find it works better if it's a little on the big side. Also you will notice I have no idea how to play a recorder, but someone with some musical talent should be able to get some nice melodies out of this.

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Table of Contents

Making an Atabaque (Afro-Brazilian Conga)

Build a Bass Fiddle

Beginner Cigar Box Guitar

PVC Soprano Recorder

MINI-PIANO

Instant Thumb Piano: How to make a set screw lamellaphone

Crazy Looper

Simple Self Playing Guitar!

2 String Paddle Bass

Homemade Diddley Bow Electric Slide Guitar (a la Jack White)

Make A Guitar Pickup

Army-Navy Mandolin on the Cheap

Building Mandolin No. 002

Bullet Shell Pan Flute

Superterrific Tub Bass

Acoustic Vulcan lyre

X-ray Drum Heads

How to build a cajon

DIY Kids Sand Block Instruments

Styrofoam Harps

Styrofoam Maracas

A Rule Organ

Build Your Own Marimba and Wrap Your Own Mallets!

The Minty Kalimba

How to Make Bagpipes out of a Garbage Bag and Recorders

Copyright

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