Finally ......

Finally Kalimbas! Another interesting journey involving art, production, music, thoughts of charity and of course TAPIRS.

The blue group is ready

Happy World Tapir Day.  The blue group is ready today and by Monday when the Ottawa branch of the Tapir Appreciation Society will be gathering, the rest of the kalimbas will be ready too.

Putting the tapirs in ..

Putting the tapirs into the kalimba project. There are four different sizes and so there will be four different tapir images. I've started with the 'blue' kalimbas. The images below are created with watercolour and pencil crayon ..... seems to be my materials of choice these days. I wanted to keep a line (white) around the subject as a reference/reflection to the edge (indian fabric print) design. I know they're not anatomically correct but hopefully they have a cheerfulness that I would want for the whole project. Oh yes ..... I'll put in the eyes too!

Colour options

Four different shapes/sizes ... four different colour options. The red stripe across the top is constant for all four types. If there's time, I'd like to add more colour ..... we'll see, just 20days left .... Gulp!

Indian fabric printing block

For the edges, I'm going to reproduce something that caught my attention while doing the Taprons (Tapir Caper 3) - Indian fabric printing blocks. Thank you Holly and Larry for the block. I really like it and am still amazed as these blocks were hand carved! Such craft, such dexterity. I'm producing ribbons of the pattern and then wrap them around the boxes. Pencil crayon seems to add a bit of 'soft antiquity'.

Priming

Before I get down to decoration I'll prime the boxes. One coat for now - I'll sand later, maybe add another, better coat of paint. Hope this paint doesn't muffle the sound ..... guess I should have tested this first, but the train's rolling and I can't stop it now. Just 28 days to go!

From boxes to kalimbas

Kalimbas ready for decoration. Now for the fun part!

Dowels

The dowels are going to give the base for the tines. The third dowel screwed down between the two base dowels, will provide the 'spring' and 'tone' to the tines.

Date Stamp

Another one of those 'better-remember-before-I-glue-this-all-together' things. It would be great to be able to see something through the sound hole. I settled on a 'date stamp'. Something that will fix all this nonsense to a moment in time. And it's circular!

Sound Holes

Once you've got the support glued underneath the lid it's time for the sound hole. Just have to remember to drill the hole at the opposite at the opposite end of the support.

Gotta get that support in!

First job (after removing the hinges, clasps etc.) is to glue a strip of wood just inside the lid - this will be the end of the box that will support the tines. This small strip of wood give the screws something to bite into …. so, so, necessary as there will be a whole lot of tension created by the spring of the tines. I'm only writing this 'cos if you don't remember to do this at this stage you can't go back and fix it ….. you'll have to throw it in the trash.

Different shapes and sizes

Searches at multiple dollar stores gave me 27 boxes, but not all the same size or shape. Even found an hexagonal one! I wonder how the sound will be affected by the size ….. can you get an hexagonal sound? Does sound have shape?

Not everything works

For the longest time I looked for a small inexpensive 'sound box' something that I could get 30 of  fairly easily. A search online led me to sites that would supply small wooden boxes but only if I ordered a thousand. Then one Saturday lunchtime we had sardines on toast for lunch. I was washing out the tin when I thought that the tin just needed a cover (preferably wood) and I would have a cheap sound container.

After washing out the tins carefully (no one wants a smelly kalimba right?) I got hold of sheets of birch laminate. The type that has adhesive on the back. I was able to use the point of an iron to heat/glue the wood into place. A hole was drilled, dowels were glued in place, tines were fixed …… and then, and then ……. nothing. 

The tone was awful … kind of tinny - excuse the pun. I guess there wasn't enough space in the tin for the sound. Anyway, goes to show not all things work. A phrase comes to mind …. "He who can't make a mistake, can't make anything." Yeah, let's go with that, 'cos I make lot's of mistakes.

The first kalimba

I made my eldest daughter a kalimba for her 9th birthday. Took quite a time and lots of rejects ended in the garbage. The 'keys' were the hardest thing to find. Eventually I settled for the 'tines' of a garden rake painted at the end with enamel.

Three small dowels coloured with alkyd dyes created the tension and worked pretty well as long as they were strong enough resist bending under tension. The key thing is the 'box' - that which acts like a resonating box - the better the box the better the sound. I used thin birch laminate and glued all six sides over a few days. Finished everything off with a numeral '9' beneath the sound hole.

So, I have had kalimbas in mind for a Tapir Caper for as long as I've been doing these projects. The problem has always been to find the necessary parts within reasonable costs. 'Cos it would be silly to raise funds with objects the cost me a fortune to create - right? I have to strike a balance! 

Well just recently I came across 'dollar store' boxes. They come as plain wood boxes, usually hinged, for people to decorate as jewelry boxes and the like. Now, no one store carries 30 of these and certainly not all the same size, so over the last few weeks I have toured all the dollar stores in the city gathering boxes of varying sizes. So, boxes ......check!

The boxes being quite small means that I don't need 'garden rake tines' - they would be far too big. Dollar Stores come to the rescue again  - they sell 'bobby pins' 'hair pins' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_pin) - lots of them. And the big ones are just the right strength, plus they have a plastic coating on one end ..... perfect. Keys/prongs/tines ..... check!

There are 58 days left till April 27th during which I will go through the process of making 30 kalimbas. Then decorating before finally packaging them. As before, I will blog the whole process and invite anyone to comment as they wish. Looking forward to World Tapir Day '13

First prototype