Friday, December 24, 2010
251210

Cajon

A Cajón, Spanish for ( 'crate', 'drawer', or 'box'). More commonly known today as a kind of box drum played by slapping the front face with the hands to draw sound from it. The cajón was most likely developed in coastal Peru during the early 1800s by dock workers that used empty crate boxes as drums.

Ok, finally heres an update after like ages of a dry spell
Been working for a while on my Cajon. Roughly since I came back from bintan
Im about 2 weeks into this project and im finally more or less done.
Was delayed by my laziness and my phuket trip - which was rainy again, just like every beach holiday I go for.

Anyway heres some pictures on what ive done so far


I started off looking at some people who have already made their own cajons to try and learn from them ( started off months ago after I saw Mengs picture with her playing it)
Following that I went to ranking sports to get feel of them and eventually got a taste of the sound of the expensive $400 german made entry level models and the cheap copies from china that cost $250
There was a clear and distinct difference in the sound man. I think most people could probably tell right away.
I took down some real world measurements for the size of the cajon at the shop. The uncle gave me this really curious look. It was the "What the heck do you need to measure this for?!?!", look.

Anyway I used what I learned and added in my own ideas to come up with my own designs and drew up some blueprints.
I also did some 3D models in google sketch but im too lazy to dig them up, lol.




After getting my dimensions, I finally went off to get the wood, which upon carrying it out of the shop made me realise that it was so DAMN FREAKING HEAVY.
I asked the uncle for a big plastic bag to hold all the wood and he told me " Nobody use plastic bag one! Sure tear!"
But I managed to get them from him anyway cause I didnt want to get too many splinters on my hands
Heres the picture of the pile wood below.

Dont be fooled by the small quantity!
It was relatively thick, so it ended up DAMN HEAVY

Sadly I didnt quite want to dirty my camera while I was working on it
There was just too much saw dust everywhere for me to risk pictures
Thus I dont have pictures on the process

As with every project of mine, I eventually will run into teething problems
To cut the long story short, I eventually bought another thinner piece of ply wood for the tapa
(front where you strike the cajon on)
It ended up as 3.66mm, super thin compared to the 9mm I first ordered
Fast forward 1 week later, and you will find me adjusting the cajon in an attempt to find a sound that I like/can live with.
Managed to find that 2 days ago and as a result, I began to shape the cajon and sand paper the whole thing down.
Super super super tiring work man, but I eventually managed do enough to satisfy me.

Heres my cajon

Front


Back
Legs
Can anyone guess what I used to make the legs of the cajon?
Its actually a door stopper! The type that gets mounted into the ground.

You put them all together and you will eventually get this

Building this cajon was quite an experince.
It actually told me a lot of things
It taught me why im not a carpenter
It at also taught me why these things can end up being so pricey.
Youre mostly paying for the workmanship rather than the materials.

So how does it sound? Anything like the expensive one?
Well.... It certainly doesnt sound like the expensive ones from Meinl ( 800 bucks )
To me I find it sounds equal to the china ones or better than the china ones.
So to have paid roughly around 1/4 of the price, im already pretty pleased with the sound im getting.

Ok thats the end of my post, Merry christmas everyone!
Hope you liked this overdue update of mine.

10:17 AM

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