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Tape a string around the tube at the angle you want the nails to be embedded, and mark at even spacings with a permanent marker. Take a drill, with a smaller bit than the nail, and drill your holes. |
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Heat the nail over a candle. |
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Push the nail through the smaller hole - this will melt plastic, which helps "anchor" the nail when it cools. The nails I used are exactly half the tube's width. Because they spiral, no two nails are on exactly the same level. |
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Cap off one end. The caps are made from thick-ish cardboard, with every other lip cut deeper, to sit inside the tube, and the others can be taped around the outside (if you want, you can glue the inside lips carefully, but it's not necessary) with electrical tape, or some kind of thick, fibery tape. I prefer the cardboard end caps because they're thin enough to allow a "warm" sound through. I used small plastic beads for filling - the kind kids can melt together and make plastic mats from. You can use anything you want - just experiment with the tonal quality and amount (i.e. the length of time it will all take to fall through). |
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Cap off the other end. Before covering the tube, you may want to put one layer of the thick tape over the nail-heads, just to smooth it out. I didn't, but I camouflaged the nail bumps with decorative yarn instead. |
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Before covering the body of the tube, "cap off" the ends with the contact paper, cutting a larger circle, with triangles cut out of the excess lip, to lay it smoothly over the end. I secured these triangles with a thin strip of contact paper, before covering the main body. I covered the body in several sections - it's too complicated to cover it all in one piece - so wherever I had a seam, I camouflaged it with the yarn. Wahlah. Total time: About 3-4 hours. The tube to the right is the carrying case. |
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