Kind of amazing that I haven’t already done something like this – sliced it open on the inside of the body structure while trying to thread a coarse nut onto a fine-threaded tap bolt. Duh. Today we began sorting out the foundational hardware – the junk that holds the xylophones to the van. They’re going …
Deflowering the sheet metal
First mounting hole. (Rogan‘s photo)
Keyboard 2 of 3 laid out (well, okay, it’s half a full keyboard, but …)
By now, it should be plain that there’s absolutely no linear flow to the XyloVan construction plan. With Maker Faire bearing down on us in 7 weeks, we’re tackling tasks willy-nilly, like a crew of chimps with A.D.D. and a pound of meth – frenziedly, for long stretches, whether in teams or alone, whenever we’re …
Makeover, step 1
So I spent Saturday morning in the junkyard with Dave (thanks, Dave!), who helped me pull a rear door, a ladder and an extra panel of headliner. Then I picked up a chunk of carpet remnant (right) which should mesh nicely with the body color and look pretty clean once I get it glued and …
Drilling 62 holes
It goes something like this, two 3/8ths-inch holes for each of the 31 keys in Keyboard 1. Takes about two minutes per hole. And yes, my neighbors might hate me. (video lost when we quit Facebook)
There, I fixed it – Part 1
So here’s the solution to the problem I discovered yesterday. The problem was that the xylophone – if bolted to the van with the upper hinge of the frame just below the windows – would have scraped the ground. Solution: Get a few more Speed-Rail parts and create a sort of offset cantilever hinge. Built …
Stripdown
Go team! We got a lot done today on prepping the van – gutting the interior so we can overhaul the carpet, seats and headliner (and see how to mount the xylophones) and scrubbing off the rest of the mid-80s tequila-sunset striping. @alienrobot finished stripping off all that stuck-on trim with a razor blade.
Roughing out the frame for keyboard 1
Now that the keys are all cut, price we have to lay out the frame. As I said, I don’t have strict engineering plans for this thing, I’m going by the seat of my pants. But I know what the materials will be, so I’ve laid out the frame – it’s 1-1/2-inch aluminum scaffold tubing, …
The Big Picture is all in your head
By now you’ve probably gathered I’m not an engineer. None of the XyloVan team is, really. As a result, this build blog is more a chaotic pile of raw coverage than a fetishistically neat, step-by-step how-to. This rolling concert instrument (I do dream of a fleet of instrumental art cars – DrumVan, or PianoBoat, anyone?) …
Finding the nodes, drilling the keys
(video lost when we quit Facebook)Once the keys are cut and rough-tuned, they must be mounted. Step one is finding the “nodes,” or the dead spots at either end of the key where the metal doesn’t vibrate. This is where I’ll drill holes for mounting. To do this, you park the key atop two pairs …
Prettifying the windows in the junkyard door
One of the drawbacks with the door from the junkyard is that it had a two-paned window instead of the nice big panoramic single light the original door came with. Really fussy-looking. Kills the lines of the van (such as they are). And easily remedied. First, remove the windows and the weatherstripping. Like this:
Life inside the xylophone factory
It’s often noisy and dusty when I’m cutting, so full respirator/goggles/earplugs are called for. I’m not the neatest craftsman in the world, and I have a lot going on at any one time. Here’s a view of the entire workspace.
Tubular bells array – sound check
(video lost when we quit facebook) Here’s the first set of tubular bells, untuned. Tuning them is a pain in the ass: Unlike the keys, these cannot be made flatter by hollowing out the middle, between the nodes. Instead, you can only sharp them by carving slices off the ends. Luckily, I wound up creating …
Junkyard crawl 3 – The re-dooring of XyloVan
It’s promisingly non-rainy gray when we set out. The minute we arrive at the junkyard, the sky tears. A good, heavy rain soaks us and everything around us, but it’s a good day to be slogging around with wrenches in our fists and a plan. This is the day to replace the door I smashed. …
Xylophoned!
I took a little time tonight to lay out a near-full keyboard on some telephone wire just to see how the 2-½-octave range sounded: (video lost when we quit Facebook) The keys don’t ring yet because there are no insulators under them, no holes drilled, no resonators to catch the sound yet, and it still …
On the subject of accomplishing things
Pride goeth before the fall, they say. For a while there, I was having a proud day. I had a DMV appointment at 10:40. By the time I waded through two jammed parking lots and landed out on Glenoaks, it was 10:52. But no problem, I sailed right through check-in, waited 10 minutes and was …
Amplification tests – how do we mike this thing?
This weekend’s work has been mostly about sound (with a little van tinkering here and there). How do we amplify two full keyboards of two and a half octaves of keys each, order plus numerous gongs and chimes? Full-court press – set up a testing environment, bring in some mikes and amps, and sort it …
Busy night at the xylophone factory
I got into a real rhythm last night and blew through a good 27 linear feet of aluminum bar stock, cutting keys for the xylophones. To the right here is what my shop floor looks like – thick with aluminum dust. I must have swept up 5 pounds of the stuff. (The logo on the …
Sound check
We’ve knocked out two octaves worth of keys so far, only a sample of which will fit on the bench for a demo. Obviously they’ll sound much fuller after we figure out how to set up resonators and amplification, but at least they’re correctly tuned. (videos lost when we quit facebook, but read on) (more …
The G-sharp aluminum disk gong sounds like this
(content lost when we quit Facebook)