MIMF

by **Rich Wickstrom** » Sun May 01, 2016 11:18 am

My son and I spent the last year building a concert grade xylophone from scratch (see photo). The bars are made from Honduras Rosewood. I am almost done documenting the project, including the bar construction and tuning, on my website at http://supermediocre.org/index.php/rich ... e-project/. I spent considerable time documenting it, because I didn't find much info on the web, so thought this was unique, and hoped that others might benefit from our efforts.

Incidentally, Fine Woodworking magazine is currently working up a story on us for their website. I expect that will be posted this summer sometime.

This being an instrument makers forum, I thought this might be of interest. However, I am new to the forum, so I hope this post is appropriate.

Rich

by **Barry Daniels** » Sun May 01, 2016 3:47 pm

Yes, that is appropriate and also much appreciated. Welcome to the MIMF, Rich.

by **Jason Rodgers** » Mon May 02, 2016 12:27 am

Totally appropriate, and totally awesome!

by **Rich Wickstrom** » Mon May 02, 2016 7:38 pm

Thanks for the welcome and comments guys! I stumbled across this forum and had to say that it is super cool. I had no idea so many guys were building instruments. Kind of inspiring me to build a guitar. :-)

Rich

by **Jason Rodgers** » Tue May 03, 2016 12:15 am

Just skimmed your site a bit. Very thorough and enjoyable to read.

by **Rich Wickstrom** » Tue May 03, 2016 10:37 pm

Thanks Jason. I hope a few folks will find it useful. I was surprised at how little info there was out there on building a xylophone. I know it's kind of a niche, but the internet's a big place! Also, it was cool to build this with my son and show him what regular dudes can do if they put their minds to something. Hopefully he'll be one less kid staring at his phone and actually doing something instead.

by **Chuck Tweedy** » Thu May 19, 2016 12:28 am

Very cool! Anything made from Honduras rosewood it cool!
Thanks for sharing Rick

by **Bill Raymond** » Thu May 19, 2016 1:56 am

Very, very nice, indeed.

by **Rich Wickstrom** » Sat May 21, 2016 10:57 am

Thanks for the comments guys. My son continues to enjoy playing it. Attached is a sound file of a song that he is learning. My woodworking skills are definitely better than my recording skills, so the recording is kind of so-so, but you get the idea.

by **Rich Wickstrom** » Sat May 21, 2016 11:29 am

Oops. Just realized I cannot upload sound files. Duh.

You can hear Jack playing it at: https://soundcloud.com/rdwicks/xylo-demo

by **Jim McConkey** » Sat May 21, 2016 3:45 pm

You can upload sound files, but they have to be less than 200K, see here: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1656

by **Eric Knapp** » Sat May 21, 2016 8:29 pm

One of my daughters asked me if I could make a xylophone. I said I had no idea. Now at least I see it can be done. Thanks!

-Eric

by **Rich Wickstrom** » Sat May 28, 2016 9:40 am

Jim - Good to know I can upload audio files. Thanks for the info.

Eric - If you do decide to make one, there are full size PDF templates on the website for each bar. You still have to tune the bars because wood varies from piece to piece, but at least they provide a good starting point for the shape. Because I am a geek, I used some software to tune my bars, but most people use a strobe tuner.

Rich