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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Category: Workspace
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)
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?) is taking shape in a raw, organic form in our minds .
I’m not computing engineering challenges ahead of time. I’m figgerin’ ’em out as soon as I get my hands on the materials.
This means I use sketches as a sort of problem-solving tool rather than a full-on architectural spec.
So this one (above) is one of the earliest, showing a three-quarter view and all the gross components we’re planning to build and attach – xylophones, gongs, lights, sun-shelters, speakers, etc.
I’m posting these largely because tonight’s the deadline for Maker Faire entries and we’re hoping to have the van in some kind of playable shape by then.
So on the one hand, you have crudely-detailed sketches like these:
And on the other hand …
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.