This is more of a prototype than anything, made from 2×4’s and plywood. This is another attempt to produce sound by mechanically bowing something (in this case tuned brass rods) and selecting notes with a keyboard. This instrument only has 24 notes, the reason so few is, it produces vibrations using the length of the brass rods. More notes would have quickly made this thing 20 ft or more long to get low notes. I may someday build something that uses rods mounted in the rafters of a building, but for now this “scratched my itch” to build something that sounds a bit like bowed glass. This photo was taken at a folk music festival my hometown is trying to get rolling. This was it’s second year, and I had my wheelharp (see my other projects for it) and a few other things on display. It went pretty well, and I hope to build something new to put on display every year and help breathe a little life back into our old town.

I was going to paint this instrument to hide the pine, but just couldn’t bring myself to do it…

I’ll try and figure out how to post a recording of it soon- I think it sounds pretty neat, but most people tend to lean a little more towards “creepy” when they descibe what it sounds like.

This is a project from about ten years ago. It is a replica of a pump organ that has been in the family for almost 100 years. My sister had it for several years, but got one that was in better playing condition. I got the old one so it would stay in the family, but wanted my sister to have something to remember the old one by.

It’s about 3 inches cross, made from walnut.

The knobs behind the keyboard are little brad nails.
The black sharp keys are snipped pieces of wire.

It has some dust in the nooks, but then again…usually the big on does too.

I built this for a co-worker of my wife who wanted to give it as a gift to her husband. She wanted a celtic inscription inside, so I went with an overall celtic knot theme. The overlay on the soundboard may deaden the sound a bit, but It’s not so bad I wouldn’t do it again.

I bought some walnut from our local mill, and it went every which way when I resawed it. I wound up using some that was stashed in the loft of our old barn. It was probably 50 yrs old at least, and sawed by my grandpa who I never knew…he passed 5 years before I was born.

The top is made from birch…I’ll probably stick with some type of conifer from now on.

The case was made from oak, with a velour over foam insert cut to match the dulcimer. The outside of the case was masked and sprayed with dye for the knot accents.

The handle is little brass hinges riveted to a stuffed and stitched leather strap- I have to make some more things with handles…It worked too good to not do it again!

These pictures are not the greatest…I never did get a good overall shot, but maybe they’ll give some idea.
My wife got a new camera for Christmas- maybe my future projects will have better pix!

When we built our house, we found an old clawfoot tub for the bathroom. We wanted something to kind of match for the sink, but didn’t want to pay big $ for a reproduction. My wife’s brother bought a farm that had an old house on the property. In one of the back rooms, there was a wall mount sink that had been used as a workbench and had about 3/4” of various colors of dried paint and mud caked on top. I stripped it down and painted both it and the tub with chroma base white and clear coat. Not wanting to just hang the sink off the wall with all of it’s undersides showing, I used leftover oak flooring to build a cabinet with icebox hardware. I copied the claw feet of the tub as best I could. The hardest part for me was the curved wraparound uprights. Not wanting to waste a bunch of oak by turning down a solid piece, I glued up a hollow pine octagon, turned it to the required radius, quarted it, the covered it with oak veneer. I don’t guess they ever actually made an undersink cabinet like this, but it combines two looks I love- the icebox and clawfoot, and kinda sorta looks like something you might have seen in an early 20th century home?

I built two of these for a reenactment we have at Fort Davidson in Pilot Knob MO every three years. I copied a drum I found a picture of on an antiques website up northeast. I changed the company to a MO outfit, so this is not an accurate reproduction. The Mozart company were German as it turns out…I just thought the maker of the original liked Mozart, but a sharp eyed history buff set me straight!

These are real simple, with oak bracing inside a luan shell. I planed one ply off 1/4 luan, making it flop around like a wet rag. The hoops are oak, with deer skin heads. The hardware that tensions the snares was cast from brass on one drum, and aluminum on the other. I had no idea what I was doing, but they seemed to work. I wound up with one of ‘em, looks good under the Christmas tree!

A few years ago I was adjusting a hurdy gurdy I built, (which is a sort of small mechanical keyed fiddle from the middle ages) and thought the mechanics of the thing were way too cool to be kept on such a small scale. I started trying to think of ways to make a larger instrument that would simulate the sound of a violin, but use a keyboard…an idea I later found out that has intrigued many people for hundreds of years, including Leanardo DaVinci. After a long period of of planning, this is what I came up with… A sound sample can be heard by doing a search for “wheelharp” on google or yahoo, etc and going to the site hosted by “oddmusic”, or here is a link to a clip on photobucket-

It uses 60 nylon strings arranged in a half circle around a 2 ft dia rosined wheel that acts as a bow. When you push a key, it bows the string. It has a lot of shortcomings, but I have am still tweaking it, and have ideas for a different version…stay tuned :)

added 3-19-09…I started the different version.

http://lumberjocks.com/JonJ/blog/7873