Page 54 - Australian Wood Review №103 2019

PROJECT

7

8

9

7. A straight piece of wood clamped down provided a guide
for the jigsaw to run against during the long cuts. Drill an entry
hole for the jig saw blade and ease up against the guide to
make a clean and straight cut. You can freehand jigsaw the
keys but it won’t be as neat a job or have as straight a line.

8. The longer keys can be sawn to length again using a
guide. A right angle guide is clamped and keeps the saw
straight. The two shorter keys have to be sawn freehand.
The endgrain on these will need to be straightened up with
a file. Or do as I now do and use a plunge router to
dimension the keys to length.

9. I sand the top now to 180 grit. The ends and side can have
their final sand after the tuning. These drums always need
rubber feet to sound well, so for the tuning process I fit rubber
feet to the base.

10. Establish a key you are happy with the sound of and
10 progressively work through all the keys lowering or raising
the pitch. It is a slow process sounding a note, drilling and
11 repeating. It took me hours to tune my first drum.

11. Remove the rubber feet fitted for tuning and ensure the
lower edges of the sides and ends are flush. No matter how
careful you were when initially gluing them these areas won’t
be perfectly level now. A handplane is tool of choice to flatten
the surfaces so the base will glue on as perfectly as possible.
Before gluing the base on I give the internal surfaces a light
coat of polish. The solid wood base, sized to the opening can
then be glued on.