Cahon Building....

I am building a Cahon. My mate did it a little while ago and I always meant to make one myself. Now I have got some wood together for free and decided to give it a go. The reminder was a bought one in Jaywalk Guitars which did cost a lot of money. So I bought a snare for £7, a piece of long baton for £4 and a sheet of thin plywood for £6. The rest of the ply was free and I already had wood glue, screws, paint, varnish and tools (apart from the new drill I had to buy as mine finally gave up the ghost!).

I used the plans here...

http://www.cajon-drums.com/docs/cajon-plans1.pdf

And then adapted them to fit a drum snare rather than the wires shown here. In my experience the snare has a much more pleasing sound.

First part - cut the wood using a jigsaw cutter. The circle I thought may cause me problems but in the end I drilled round the hole circumference and then joined the dots - easy!

that darker wood bit is the thinner ply (3 ply from Proper Job, a local store) and the lighter wood is 8 ply and 1/2 inch or more thick. It had lots of baton stuck to the other side which I had to get off and it took ages but the wood was free so I can't really complain.

Next job was to stick the thing together. I firstly assembled the box using screws so I could then stick the box together using wood glue and then screw it back together to hold it while it dried as I don't have any braces.

 I then sanded it all down for smoothness, took out the screws and filled in all the holes. Then it was left to dry before I sand and paint.  I also gave the tapa (the front panel that you hit) a one coat of clear varnish.

One good coat of undercoat...

And then a couple of coats of black...

By this point I've already set the snare but it needs final adjusting so once the second coat is dry I go about setting the right sound. 

This is the most important step in many ways.  But now the second coat is dry (i'm writing this blog in stages as I go along), or at least dry enough to handle so I stick on 4 felt stick-on feet and then set the snare.

 I practised setting it up before I painted it and put two wooden blocks in the sides (first screwed and then stuck in with glue) which hold the snare in place. I had to move both sides to get the right sound (or at least a decent sound) and it was a boring process moving it, screwing down the tapa, then trying it, then unscrewing it, then moving the snare and so on. But here it is. Now it is level and sits against the inside of the tapa so when you bang it, it resonate much like a snare drum.

And then, once I have everything happily set, I screw on the tapa with the heads of the screws sunk to make it look that bit nicer!  At this moment I'm waiting to make sure the paint is dry before I sit on it. I don't want a black arse.

But I can slap it where it stands and its a bit springy but sounds quite good. 

And now its dry I can play it!

Well nearly dry! My weave of my jeans are showing in the thicker gatherings of paint. But its enough to post this video...

The sound quality of this video isn't great so you cant really hear the more bassy sounds and the snare but the cahon itself sounds ok. Not amazing but ok and certainly better than some of the commercial ones I've seen at £100+.

I hope you'll let me know if you decide to make one and how you get on.

Cheers. Until next time...