David’s birthday present Cajon, Esther’s ballet
We gave David a Cajon (pronounced “car-horn”, Peru beat-drum) for his birthday, and got it last Wednesday (when stock arrived at Swee Lee). He had learnt to play it from Church friends and plays it pretty well. The good news: it is branded, a Meinl, and cheap at $70. The bad news: we must assemble it on our own (well, we also see this as good news for DIY practice and bonding time).
Ready made cajons are generally from $150 to $800. This piece costs $70, plus another $15 for brackets (YowCH’s idea), screws, white glue, brush, wood stain, lacquer spray and sandpaper. We also needed a drill, screw drivers, wood file, G-clamps, pencil and ruler.
Step-by-step:
1. Apply white glue to the boards and assemble them.
2. Screw in the brackets (for additional strength and stiffness, not in the included instructions).
3. Hammer the boards into place neatly.
4. Apply white glue to mount the back-board (with hole).
5. Put some weight to press the back-board while the glue dries.
6. Glue the timber batons and clamp into place.
7. All batons clamped for glue-drying.
8. Mark out the drill holes on the front panel (the drumming part).
9. Assemble the snare (for the ‘tsk-tsk’ sound).
10. Mount the snare into place with white glue and clamp to set.
11. Screw the front panel in place, 4 corners first to fix the position.
12. Drill the front panels other screw holes. All screws installed after this.
13. Sand down the edges and make any roughness smooth.
14. Clean up after sanding.
15. YowCH showing David how to apply the black wood-stain.
16. David applies the stain. He chose black.
17. Esther helped, too. Total of 2 coats for the front (lighter colour), and 4-5 coats for the rest (darker).
18. After the stain dried (with help of a hot air from a hair-dryer), lacquer was sprayed-on.
19. Screw the rubber footings onto the bottom of the cajon.
20. All rubber footings installed, cajon completed.
In truth, there was much adult supervision needed for the handling of tools and brush or spray painting, but a child of 10 should be able to follow the instructions and complete 80% of the work.
Here’s David playing the completed cajon. The completed cajon sounds good! It is a Meinl after all.
Here are some rare photos of Esther during her ballet lessons. The teacher helped take these photos.
