Lumber and American Wordworker Magazine

I was very excited to get my lumber and magazine withing a day of each other. The lumber is a beautiful light purple in color, it is going to look fantastic. I am glad I ordered it though because I looked about getting more to make my wife a meditation bench and they are already out of it again! The wood is currently sitting in my house acclimating to the conditions before I begin planing it to final thickness. A few more days should do it.

The magazine arrived the day after the wood. The article/plans for the xylophone are by Raymond Levy and are wonderful. It is for a single octave xylophone (no half notes) made out of red oak. I plan on making a two octave xylophone (also with no half notes) with the purple heart wood I purchased. The dimensions are only a little different and I am sure can be used for most any hardwood you choose. The trick would be to leave the pieces a little long so you have room to shorten them while tuning.The thing I really like about his plans is the resonator box. I am definitely going to adapt it to work with the two octave xylophone I make.

My plan at this point is to plane down one of the two boards I purchased from 3/4" to 5/8". I will then rip the 6" board into 4 strips, each 1 3/16" wide. It took some figuring, but I should be able to cut all of my blanks out of these 4 strips. However, I purchased the second board in case there is trouble. I think I will only cut and tune one blank at a time, that way if I mess up in the tuning, I can use that blank for a higher pitched key and cut a new blank for the one I mess up. Hopefully by taking my time, I will not have to use any of the second board and I can use it to make the meditation bench.