Lisa and Inge, marimba students of MyLinda King talk about
building marimbas with the "Build Your Own Marimba" videotape.
What experience in woodworking did you have before using Build Your Own Marimba? How long did it take you to build your marimbas? Did you have any concerns before starting the project? What was it like to build the marimbas? What surprised you about building them? What was the hardest part? What advice would you give someone who was thinking about building one?
None. We had help doing the rough cuts from someone with experience to speed up the process.
Several weekends, maybe four or five.
The time it would take, and whether we would be capable of tuning ourselves.
It was a great first woodworking experience with detailed step by step instructions. It gave me confidence to try another woodworking project in the future.
That I was able to learn the use of power tools and how to use a tuner without too much difficulty. The red (saw)dust is messy, messy messy!
Our lack of working space meant organizing whole marimba days to make it worth our effort. We had to borrow equipment and the space. This dragged the project out. If one had 24 hour a day access to a workshop and tools it would be a lot quicker process.
Patience. Good ventilation mask and suction equipment on sander. Let keys sit a couple of weeks in between rough tuning and fine tuning. Look for a workshop space you can have access to frequently where you can leave all your equipment and materials.