Our Marimba Project

Jeremy decided a while ago that he wanted to make a marimba. I was like, "wow, you can do that?" I guess you can! It took forever to make the wood frame and during that time I wasn't interested in the project and still wasn't convinced this was a good idea. But I started to get sick of how much time he was spending on it (pretty much every waking moment), and decided I was going to help him. So we've been staying up to one or two (or three) in the morning working on this together and it's been really fun making it. And it's starting to look awesome! We're almost finished with it.

First the plans and measurements.


Making the end boards


The other end piece


Long boards set up and keys set on to see if it was going to match up.


Jeremy marking the location of the keys on the boards.


Then time for the resonating chambers. We thought cutting out the little plugs for the resonating chambers took forever. But there was something worse to come.


The bar posts or string holders. 120 total. If it took 1 minute to make one it would take 2 hours to make these. It takes 4-5 minutes to make one. You do the math. Time consuming. But they look great. Jeremy's half way done so far.


Plugs being put in the pipes and tuned. That was difficult at first.


Then attaching the pipes to the metal struts


Then making cuts to hang the metal with the tubes.


Jeremy tuning the resonating chambers.


All the resonating chambers in! We feel accomplished! Now we just have to put in the string holders, sand and stain the wood, paint the resonators, and put the keys on! Then it's ready to play.