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)
Junkyard Crawl – Episode 2: ghostwatching and getting seated
To paraphrase Ratty (or was it Mole?) there is nothing half so fine as an afternoon spent messing about in junkyards. Rob was kind enough to join me in a trip to PickYourPart in Sun Valley, where the gutted wrecks hunker beneath the sun in neat rows. Parts lie in exploded clouds around them, and …
The junkyard crawl
XyloVan needs new seats. Lord, how we need new seats. Legions of nameless alcoholics, slouching through this former taxi-bus’ years of service for a sober-living facility, site have shredded the fabric. Looks like someone force-fed meth to a sackful of starving cats, gave it a good shake, slung it inside and slammed the door in …
Changing valve-cover gaskets on a 7.5-liter Ford V-8
This is a hardy old bucket. The motor’s in good shape (76, this 000 local miles), the transmission whines and leaks but still has plenty of life in it. It has new brakes and tires, and feels rock-solid. But the motor leaks like a sieve, so I thought I would tackle the only leak-plugging task …
drill buffer
Okay. Long story short, I spent half of the day Saturday(2/6/10)working on a single key with the bench grinder buffer until @factoid finally realized that I had been using the wrong buffing compound. It was a laugh for him, but it only made me mad. so we walked down to Baller Hardware and got another …
More key cutting
We cut more keys this weekend. We’re up to F#. Almost one out of the four planned octaves of keys is cut (but only half of the keys are tuned so far. Since the metal heats up during cutting, and heated keys resonate a good half-tone lower than room-temperature keys, you’re forced to put them …
Step 4 – Seat hunting
It’s a big, old van and it needs new seats. Or at least new upholstery. Spent a good hour calling around to junk yards yesterday, including TruckWrecking.com and had no luck digging up a set of seats for a 1985 Ford Club Wagon XLT. The seats any Ford van built in the surrounding 10 years …