There’s still the auxiliary battery, the amplifier, the mixer, the speaker system, two resonators, the interior headliner needs replacing, the sun canopies haven’t been sewn, and the whole thing has to be wired and lit for the playa.
But when you bang on the thing it rings.And that’s what we set out to do in time for Maker Faire … Continue reading
I fell in love with these things while scrounging through the scrap bins at Industrial Metal Supply.
They’re the sawn-off leavings of enormous logs of aluminum, this some of which had been many feet long and up to 12 inches thick.
They sound fantastic. And they look pretty graphic against the green of the van, viagra in nice contrast to the rectangular-keyed xylophones … Continue reading
Here’s video of alienrobot and me mounting Keyboard 2 which is the lower-octave and rear-most of the two keyboards I built for the passenger side of the van:
And here’s what Keyboard 1 looked like as friend Steve Finkel and I mounted it on the driver’s side … Continue reading
We thought about going hotrod-lowrider with a lime-green metalflake triple-clearcoat paint job and lots of chrome. But that seemed too garish and expensive. One local shop was asking $800 to $1,000 just for straight paint even if we did all the bodywork … Continue reading
There’s no trick to mounting a 400-pound-plus tube-steel roof rack atop a Ford Club Wagon XLT.
All it involves is a burly buddy, visit two day-laborers picked up from Home Depot, about it and a whole lot of swearing, check shouting and straining.
We flit from project to project, order looking like hummingbirds on crack (one day it’s instrument construction, the next day body work), but we’re still on a headlong parallel-tracked trajectory to getting the beast ready for Maker Faire.
FORWARD! IN ALL DIRECTIONS!
We did a lot of unfinished business today, (not all of it documented here).
I cut and drilled the stringers for Keyboard 3.
alienrobot and I bolted down the main mounting clamps for Keyboard 1. We bought a double fistful of bolts, nuts and washers for attachment of the mounting hardware for Keyboards 2 and 3.
And then we got busy installing the rug and putting the seats and doorsills back in … Continue reading
Blood, money, paint, metal shavings, and an awful lot of passion have been spilled here on projects for Burning Man and beyond. XyloVan is Mack Reed's creative sandbox.