At one point last year, I had this vision of a kalimba made of 3- and 6-sided planes – an instrument that would be pleasing to the eye, but fit nicely in your hands to enhance the pleasure of plinking away in the sing-songy way of kalimbas.

After prototyping it in cardboard, I translated the pattern to 3mm birch plywood. This inspired me to join a makerspace so that I could learn how to use a laser-cutter and make the (extremely finicky, difficult-to-join) design repeatable and try out different finishes …

Unfortunately, the angles are all so non-standard (except for a single 90-degree angle on the two rearmost planes) and my math and CAD skills so sub-rudimentary that I could never figure out the details to make press-fit finger joints.

So I had to kludge everything together – as I did with the prototype – with glue and hand-laid gussets inside, and smooth all the wacky corners with plastic wood and sanding.

In the end, though, they did come out shaped as designed. The pale one with the big keys is an experimental bass kalimba, and the turquoise/rust one is proof that I have a lot left to learn about finishing. I fitted them with jacks wired to piezo pickups, which makes them sound rather hellish through an amp – a little like Congotronics, only kind of awful.