When woodworking meets acoustics
If you’ve never seen an instrument like the one in this photo, you are not alone; I myself was quite surprised when I bumped into a video of one on YouTube. But when I did, I immediately knew I had to build one for my grandson, who studies the piano. It was just too cool, a woodworking project that looks good and makes lovely music!
A wooden tongue drum, a.k.a. a log drum, is essentially a thick-sided wooden resonator box with tongues cut into its top that make sounds when struck. If built well, it can make hauntingly beautiful music. If built not so well, it can make a lot of noise. Both work fine as a toy for small children, but I wanted to go with beautiful… and this is where things got complicated. Getting the drum to make the sounds I wanted, while the hardwood it’s made of has a mind of its own, was a challenge, and the project took a while. The end result can be heard in the following two videos, where I demonstrate the musical scale and my talented son in law has a go at drumming a melody.
As usual I wanted to share what I learned with the amateur woodworker community, and in this case rather than giving a full write-up of the build process (there are plenty of those online) I focused on lessons I learned, mistakes, difficulties, and caveats – and how I solved them. If you plan to build one of these, I hope you can learn from my mistakes instead of making your own. I focus in particular on the question of chasing the desired acoustics.
The full article can be downloaded here.
And here are some photos from the build process:
