Completed head and tuned marimba.

Tuesday night, off to my brothers house to finish the head and bring the Elephant home.  The Elephant had miraculously had screw holes, dents and little bits of missing ply filled by my brother on monday night.  This was a very pleasant surprise as it will save me from needing to do this tonight or tomorrow and means I now have a decent chance of getting a coat of paint on the Elephant in time for packing in at the venue on Saturday morning.

The head is pretty close to being complete, but it needs an extra piece of ply at the back of the head to hide the internal bracing.   Just as we put the head on for a final fitting more people pop by to have a look at the Elephant.  This time Nic and Nic.  Nic made the excellent tusks and finally has a chance to see what they look like installed into an Elephant.   "It's much bigger than I imagined", he says.  

I think it's fair to say it is bigger than any of us imagined.

Now for the moment of truth, can we fit the completed Elephant with head, and tusks, into the car.  I put the backbone, legs, ribs, workmate and spare ply into the car exactly the same as last time.  I have a photograph of the legs in place to work from as there is probably only one possible way to achieve this.  Head version 1.0 fitted easily into the passenger seat, but head version 2.0 is bigger and less flexible.  This isn't going to work.

We haul the workmate and ribs out of the boot and try the head in there.  It fits perfectly, with the ear just missing the boot hinge.  The ribs fit around and behind it, and the workmate (which won't usually be travelling with the Elephant) fits in the back seat with the legs.

I drive the Elephant home and, with a little help, put him back together.

It's not yet 22:00 so I tune some more marimba bars.  I have about two more bars which need a lot of retuning before getting to the almost in tune bars.  An hour later it is all pretty well in tune and the bars all sound pretty good.  One of the smallest bars is still a semi-tone sharp, but I need to use the little drum sander and drill to tune that one and it is too late at night, so it will have to stay sharp until tomorrow.  One of the 'make your own marimba' clips I found on YouTube seems to have a similarly semi-tone sharp bar near the top, so if I run out of time and leave this sharp I will claim that this is a traditional tuning.

Now I can string the bars together.

Threading bungy cord.

I thread some bungy cord through the holes in the bars, with rubber washers to separate them.

Final positioning

Then put hooks in the marimba frame to hold the cord in place.  I take the Marimba inside and play my special new instrument comissioning melody to Raewyn, and the Marimba is complete.

Completed Elephant with instruments.

Here is the completed Elephant with main instruments attached.   

The tusks still need to be drilled to allow them to be blown, but they are so magnificent I've been leaving this until last - also I needed to be sure that whatever method we used to mount them would still allow a side blown mouthpiece.

Next step painting, working out  some tunes and finding a collaborator who is in town for the performance.