More bars, more ribs, and more heads.

I am starting to run out of time.  There is only one more week left for construction, and more importantly only one more weekend.  I still have to finish the Marimba/Balafon, finish the head, finish some ribs, sand and paint the Elephant and turn my vague musical ideas into a piece.  I also have to find a collaborator to help me play the Elephant.  This is proving more difficult than I anticipated as the obvious and usual suspects are either out of town, or involved in other pieces in Bathing With Elephants... that will be happening at the same time as my piece.

Friday night I make some more Marimba bars intending to get the marimba ready for stringing up on Saturday.  I started with three long pieces of Mahogany, two were darker wood and one lighter in colour.  We cut and planed the wood until we had what I thought were enough bars.  Most of the wider bass bars were from the lighter piece of wood and when I start working on them it becomes obvious that they are going to be a problem.  Some of them split early on, and the one I manage to cut to approximate pitch just sounds dull.    So, finishing the Marimba will have to wait until tomorrow.

Saturday morning I pack the Elephant in the car and drive it over to my brother's house.  We will be fitting the Marimba frame and hopefully making a new head, so the entire animal needs to be transported.

The first job is to rout the remaining ribs, we use a slightly quicker method for holding them, so each one can be routed in one pass each side, instead of moving clamps a couple of times.

Rib about to be routed.

Next we cut some additional bars on the table saw.   Once the new bars are cut I need to find the node points using more salt.  Knowing the node points is important for two reasons, firstly material to tune the bar is removed from between the node points of the fundamental.  Secondly this is where the supporting string/cord holes will be drilled.   The various marimba making sites I have read as research suggest checking the final node points after rough tuning and drill the holes then.  I check a few of the roughly tuned bars and the nodes are as close to the original lines as I'm ever going to be able to drill, so we set up a guide and mark on the drill press plate and drill all the holes in all the bars.

The Marimba is going to sit just over the ribs and if everything has gone to plan there will be room to fit a removable frame.  The audience will be looking from the other side, so it will look like ribs are being played.  The frame looks simple to make, but there are some complicated angles to be worked out to allow it to sit nicely on the strange shaped shoulders and hips.  

Frame loosely clamped and bars placed for checking.

The last thing we do on Saturday is fix blocks to hold the tusks.

Fixing the excellent tusks really start to make it look like an Elephant.

I leave the Elephant snug in my brothers garage and take the bars home to try and tune a few.

Sunday is pretty much taken up with designing and building a plywood head.  Head version 1, the foam sheet head, is already starting to fall apart so it's obviously not going to last.  Head version 2 is going to be made from plywood like the rest of the Elephant.  We start with a new cardboard mockup (I made one earlier before head version 1).

Cardboard mockup.

Then, build the head up with ply, which involves some complicated angles and mitre saws.

Most of the head.

This takes most of the day, but we finally have a pretty decent looking head on the Elephant.  The trunk and tusks finish off the look.  The Elephant is complete (although not finished).

We carry the Elephant out onto the driveway for a bask in the sunshine.  The neighbours look astonished and come over and have a closer look at what all these noisy power tools have been working on.

People walking by in the street are beguiled by the Elephant and come for a closer look.

Shanti plays a tune on the Kundi.

Ear drum

I go home and tune some more marimba bars.

Monday night.  More Marimba bar tuning.

I started tuning the highest notes, then went to the lowest notes and tuned them.  Counting the bars and notes it looks like there aren't enough whole tones to cover the difference between the highest and lowest note.  I can really only make bars lower in pitch (they can be sharpened, but not as easily), so I make the lowest note even lower.  This takes it to C, which is nice, but I think I will still have a couple of keys left over, and may need to make some additional higher bars, eventually.