Alright, Good news-Bad news time...

The title says it all.
the good news is that I lined up the keys on the frame to get an idea of how it would all fit together, and it looks great.
the bad news is that I appear to be missing a key...

also, the other day we got the aluminum struts for holding up the resonators, and the eyelets for supporting the bars:

Stage 2- another work in progress

 Annotated Bibliography

Banek, Reinhold, and Jon Scoville. Sound Designs. Berkeley: Ten Speed, 1980. Print. this is the book that i used as one of my first resources. it was a good first guide, but most of the information in it is obsolete by now.

“Build Your Own Marimba and Wrap Your Own Mallets!” Instructables. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. . This website is prehaps the most useful to me for this project. it was the first inspiration for it, and has continued to be something that I refer to whenever I am uncertain about something.

La Favre, Jeffery. “The La Favre 5-Octave Marimba.” The La Favre 5 Octave Marimba. N.p., 2007. Web. 15 Sept. 2010. . I used this site for several purposes: figuring out the rough dimensions of the bars and arches, figuring out the length and diameters of the resonators, and help finding the nodes of the bars.

Ludin-Scheer, Bonny. “Our Bass Marimba.” Crafty Music Teachers. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. . this website was one of the other early ones for me. It often seems to be just a pitch for a book, but it does have some value in terms of the choices about wood, and was one of my first resources related to wrapping mallets.

McCarthy, Jim. “Project 3.” N.d. PDF file. This document is the main guide that i’m using to build the marimba. it is a semi complete guide to building a marimba, including the frame, keys, and resonators. it comes from the website www.makeamarimba.com.

this is my current stage 2. i'm not certain how to cite primary resources (such as grandparents), so I still need to add that. aside from that, however, I think its pretty much done. Feedback?

Back again

just came back from a weekend trip to the island, where i took the opportunity to use grandpa's workshop again to finalize the tuning of all the notes. it went pretty smoothly, as they were all (with the exception of one) within about 30 cents of the target note. By now they are all at max 1-3 cents out; the accepted range of deviation is about 20 cents. unfortunatly, i don't have any pictures, as the camera was forgotten at home.