Oakland Discovery Center

Materials • a tube , cardboard ABS plastic, and bamboo all work • heavy mono filament fishing line 80-100 lb test. • 1'' wood screws • small eye screws • hard board • 1x2'' or 3/4'' dowel Tools • drill with small drill bits • hot glue gun • fin toothed wood saw The first step to making a tube zither is laying out the where the hole will be drilled so the string will be relatively straight. We used a piece of wood to mark a ring around the tube about 1 1/2'' from the top and bottom of the tube. Then we used a door jam to make four parallel line along the the length of the tube, we will drill holes at or near where the line cross the rings around the ends of the tube. Next drill some pilot holes for your screws, we opted to put the wood screws in a straight line and the eye screws on an angle for a long low string and a shorter high string. If you choose to use a soft material like cardboard hot glueing some backing pl

Materials: • approx. 8'' 1x2'' wood •  card stock (about 8'' square) or a stiff paper plate • 3 AA battery holder ( available from  www.sciplus.com  item # 92477) • 2-5k potentiometer (available from online electronics suppliers) • switch (optional) • small dc motor (about 3/4'' dai.) • 1/8'' vinal tubing x18'' (not shown) Tools • drill with bits that are near the size of your motor and optionally you potentiometer (we like Forstner bits for this application) • hot glue gun • hole punch • scissors or a utility knife • soldering iron (optional but will make the siren disk more reliable) • compass • saw Make the disk Use a compass to draw an approx. 7-8'' circle on you card stock or in the center of your paper plate. Cut the circle out and then add the holes (at least 10) with a hole punch.  By pushing the paper into the punch as deep as it will go you will end up with a perfect circle of holes, while you don'

Materials • 1x2'' wood • small Popsicle sticks, or plastic stirrers • 3/16 x 2'' inch machine screws or carriage bolts. • wing nuts Tools  • small saw • drill and 3/16th bit • screw driver Constructing the Thumb Piano is very simple, cut the 1x2'' to length (5-8'') and then drill a hole with the correct sized bit centered and about an inch from the ends of both pieces. Use the machine screws to hold the two piece loosely together.  You can use 2 wing nuts or one regular nut and one wing nut. Insert the popsicle sticks with different lengths sticking out of the 1x2'' sandwich and tighten the nuts until the sticks don't sound buzzy when plucked. If you want to adjust the sticks you only need to loosen one nut, this is why the second wing nut isn't really necessary.  The same basic rule about tone that applied to the wind instruments applies to the Thumb Piano the longer the resonator in this case the sticks the lower

Tube Zither  This is our attempt to replicate a Valiha, a type of zither from Madagascar usually made using a piece of bamboo.  We pre-drilled small holes in a piece of abs pipe we had laying around and used wood screws and eye screws attach the strings just like in the canjo. We put a small pieces of wood on the point of the screws were sticking into the pipe (not visible) and used similar small blocks of wood with grooves in them to function as bridges.  The first test produced a soft but clearly audible sound, that could be adjusted by moving the bridges, tightening or loosening the strings or figuring them like a guitar.  As the tube functions as both the resonator and the neck of the instrument its a very simple and versatile.  We will try to make a more standard model employing a cardboard tube in the near future and will post instructions when we do.   Tube trumpet Some times referred to as a Hosaphone, there are hundreds of different examples online.  That said we don

The pvc slide whistle is a modification to the pvc steam whistle which allows multiple tones to be produced  by changing the length of the whistle tube with a piston, just like a toy slide whistle.   Here are the additional items you need to turn a pvc steam whistle into a pvc slide whistle.  Materials •a 1/2'' pvc steam whistle (6-8'' long from the bottom of the whistle mouth) • a large chop stick • a 00 size rubber stopper • 3/8''id, 1/2''od vinyl tubing (about 1/2'' long) • 1/2'' pvc pipe cap Tools •  a drill with 1/4'' bit (or one at lease the size of you chop stick) • hot glue gun To make a piston we took a large chop stick (about 1/4'') and sharpened it in a pencil sharpener, then  poked it into the small end of a 00 size rubber stopper and hot glued it in place, being careful that it was on straight. To make a perfect seal inside the pipe we put a small piece of 3/8'' id, 1/2'