A new year, a new born Elephant

The next step is to frame up the rear legs using the same techniques as for the front legs.  We place the legs between parallel pieces of wood and match them up to get the angles right.  One of the legs is a bit too long and will need some wood cut off the foot, but other than that it looks good.

Working out the angles and slot positions.

Once we have worked the slot positions we cut them out using the circular saw.

Cutting out the slots

Once the rear legs and hips are together we clamp them into position and again loosely position the backbone.  With the Elephant close to its final stance we mark up a datum line along the backbone.  After doing this we can mark the positions of the slots which will hold the legs into the backbone.

In position for final slot placement.

We cut out these last two slots using the same method and come to the final crunch point.  Will the Elephant fit together, standing on it own four feet, or will we need to do some complicated and possibly costly revisions?

This really has to work first time, but we have planned and checked, and given it our best shot, so we are confident.

A few moments of Elephant wrestling later and we have a free standing Elephant.

Free standing at last

I loosely place the ribs on the Elephants back and we almost have a completed Elephant frame.

Ribs approximately in place.

I try hitting various parts of the Elephant with drumsticks, and there are some nice tones to be found, even the cavity/wood block is sounding good.

There is still a lot of work to be done before the Elephant is completed, but it is great to be able to start exploring the musical possibilities of the frame.