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heart kalimba

I'm on a bit of a trend. This was built as a belated Valentines day gift so it was made from a heart shaped candy box. The main set of tines use a busbar, just like the kalimba's on the kalimbazooka.

The pine sounding board and metal resonator gives it a pretty good sound. It is tuned to two octaves of a pentatonic C major scale.

kalimbateeny

Kalimbateeny A tiny Kalimba, also known as a thumb piano, designed to be worn as a piece of jewelery. The Kalimbateeny is a fully functional musical instrument, tuned to a D major pentatonic scale (D, E, F#, A, B). It's made from purpleheart wood, and uses bobby pins for tines.

my build notes:

- laser cut purpleheart box
  - purple heart sourced at Woodcraft, ~1/8" thick plank

  - cut in four pieces

1.     top piece

•         - sound hole
•         - holes for retaining bar screws to go though

2.     middle pieces

•         - most of interior volume removed
•         - slightly larger holes cut for end of screw and nut to fit
•             - should probably be even larger for washer/lock washers to fit

3.     bottom pieces

•         - no holes, etc
•         - (should have made holes through the bottom, would make assembly/disassembly easier)

- retaining bar is 1/4 inch steel rod
    - sourced at hardware store
    - two holes drilled through for retaining bar screws

      - best done on a mill/drill press but I did it with a cordless drill
    - cut to ~1.5 inches

- sound bars are 3/16 inch steel rod
    - sourced at hardware store
    - cut to ~1.25 inches
    - in theory this can be free floating on the surface, but I found

    assembly much easier after I glued them to the surface
        - gorilla glue, clamped with the retaining bar, screws, and two extra tines

-tines
    - used bobby pins
        - sourced from the pile of bobby pins in the bathroom

        - cut apart with dremel
        - used the straight part, with the rubberized coating at the end
    - (tried using tines cut from a sewer snake approx 1/8 inch wide, but these
    tines seemed to be too stiff for the small size of the box)

- fasteners

    - 3mm phillips pan screws
    - 3mm hex nuts
        - (washers and lock washers recommended if space allows)

- wood finish
    - walnut oil
        - (something a little clearer would have probably been better, to lessen discoloration of the purpleheart)

- hanging
    - slot cut though 3rd layer of wood before box assembly
        - large enough to fit some silver craft wire though to make
         wire wrapped loops on each end
    - cording created from hand-dyed silk ribbon and attached to wire-wrapped loops with overhand knots

    - overhand knots covered with cones
    - ends finished with ribbon ends

flushio=0/kalimbazooka video

Wherein you can witness my awe inspiring stage presence.