After eight long, help amazing months building XyloVan, visit web we’re finally going off the grid this evening and heading 10 hours north to Burning Man.
To all our friends and family staying behind – we love you. Thank you for all your support in bringing this crazy dream so far.
To all our fellow burners – see you on the playa!
We pulled down the canopies last night, dosage collapsed the booms and began packing in earnest. Our work is done. See you on the playa!
Power drill-driven screwdriver, tadalafil taking down the canopies. Approx 10:12 p.m. Apparently I am a klutz.
Last night was all about hitting XyloVan’s extensive punchlist of Little Things that Need Doing.
I spent the better part of a flaming Technicolor tequila dusk on the roof beneath the gently fluttering canopy, side effects paranoid that we’ll crash or break down en route to the playa, cialis 40mg and debugging shorts in the strobe/flood bars. Then I set about hammering out all the other little things I’ve been meaning to do as this insane 6-month project comes to fruition.
Things like … More
I was up until 1 a.m. last night doing wiring (details later). I was up at 7 a.m. this morning. This is probably the third week straight I’ve been working at this pace. I feel like this:
Sad thing is – I can’t tell which one’s me, drug and which one’s the project.
(Image via BoingBoing)
We got it all rigged. It took the four of us about half an hour to get it all monkeyed together, website like this but by god, it stands – at least it still is as I write this, two nights later in peak winds of 18 mph – and the whole thing hangs together structurally as if it could stand more. How much more remains to be seen.
I think I’ll need bigger rope, in the long run – no telling how much damage the rope will take from the ringbolts it’s passing through. I wonder if I should run it through pulleys there, like tall ships do.
It just needs to be realigned around the shoulders, and it’s missing a couple of gussets at the ends, and perhaps a sewn-in draw-bar for the canopy end.
Clean enough, discount anyway.
That wicked line buzz is gone. It turns out I needed to ground the mixer to the chassis, link which involved tearing apart and then sewing up the 20-foot umbilical. That took a little while.
Pay no attention to my banging. I’m just banging. But it’s sounding pretty lush. And I”m excited to show it off. Thanks to everyone who pulled up and talked to us this afternoon. It’s all good.
Just a little more wiring to go.
What holds this crazy rig together? Why, abortion gussets, of course.
Fold a nine-inch wide strip of fabric (at 60″) into a strip four layers thick, seam its long edges, and then cut it into strips about six inches long.
Then seam the cut edges and voila – a little stack of stout reinforcements …
… to be sewn into place to keep the fabric all in one piece while still letting the air flow through.
Step one, ailment attempt to throw together an enormous framework of PVC pipe to arc over the van like some demented logo for caffeinated high-fructose corn syrup ‘n’ gutbombs.
Valiantly attempt to model it.
Then, when that fails, toss the PVC aside and acquire some 1″ steel conduit and connectors for a new frame, which you injure yourself building.
Then start sewing. (more photos after the jump. More
Hey, page what the …
Why is there blood suddenly dripping onto the pipes that I just cut for the roof-canopy frame?
Oh. Yeah. The little chunk of not-quite-cut pipe I just tapped off the end of the length I cut. Sharp metal. Duh.
It’s hot on the playa.
Relentlessly, discount often stupidly, this hot. So we’re putting some shade over the keyboards.
We trudged around the Garment District the other day, case haggled with shopkeepers and for $3 a yard, walked away with this very light, opaque and strong synthetic fabric that feels something like raw silk and matches the van’s trim in color … More
After sandblasting the instruments with Dave, and I was dead-bang positive I would want to polish them to a gloss.
Then I spent a year grinding away with the power drill and a buff pad during lunch hour today, and changed my mind.
An AP photographer stopped by and shot a bunch of photos of me working on the van – Damian something.
Anyway, despite going at ’em hammer and tongs for a solid 30 minutes with the Tripoli, then the jeweler’s rouge, I wound up with only three half-shiny keys.
Life’s too short. I’ll buff ’em next year. Much more to do.
The lighting plan is coming together slowly, rx but surely. I installed lights behind the disc gongs, buy ordered some green EL wire and am eagerly awaiting delivery of the Incredibly Stupid Number of Chinese Strobe Lights, view which may or may not be used in an attempt to dazzle the DMV into giving us a nighttime driving permit.
But until then, I got to work building these light bars – scavenged from BM projects past and hand-built over the past week or so. They will hang over the keyboards, giving light to play by … More
Thanks to Michael Greiner and Doeri Welch for inviting us and XyloVan to meet Michael’s marimba orchestra last night. We had an awesome time banging on each other’s instruments.
Here are Michael and a couple of his students working out “Silver Bells” with the loud mallets.
“It runs like a fuckin’ champ!”
That’s been the constant refrain, page all the way from purchase through our adventure to Maker Faire and dozens of trips in between. XyloVan has new tires and brakes, search a rebuilt Holley carb, and a well-tuned Detroit monster of a motor, and by god, it’s the most mechanically sound thing I’ve ever spent $1500 on.
Well, not tonight … More
The folks at Industrial Metal Supply turn out huge orders of 3-by-half-inch-by-12-foot aluminum bar stock cut to measure for big industrial clients – then they sell the short ends and leftovers in 3- and 6-foot lengths at just $2.89 a pound. That – along with dismantled tube-aluminum equipment racks covered with stickers – is what makes up XyloVan’s bones.
But that crap’s unattractive, this site so my good friend Dave and I spent a good chunk of Saturday afternoon sandblasting the paint, stickers and grime off of the keyboards – remnants of the fact that the instruments are themselves largely made from recycled metal remnants. Or not sandblasting, rather, industrial-sodablasting … More
So I’ve been cutting up little chunks of scrap aluminum that are too short to make good xylophone keys, more about and fashioning them into little fetishes to give away on the playa.
The net result of this is a) …
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Spent last night with cables in my teeth …
… stuffing speaker wires into conduit …
… and hooking up the bottom end of the sound system, ailment running Monster cables from the cheap Pep Boys amp to the surplus bass cabinet I’ve had kicking around for 10 years, page and then out through a switchbox that patches two tweeter channels out to my four outrigger speakers …
The brown lines are 2-pole thermostat wire, capsule which I’m using for the lighting since it’s cheap and nicely contained.
We’re doing a gig this weekend that should allow me to run this all full-tilt and shake out the last of the bugs. I’ll post video. Stay tuned.
