The making of cajon drum continues - DIY woodworking India

The making of cajon drum continues - DIY woodworking India 

Hello everyone, welcome to DIY woodworking India.

Please go through my earlier posts - making of cajon drum. I had fixed the laminates in that part. In this part, I will fix the legs and the sitting arrangement. The reason of fixing the legs is to keep the main cajon body just above the floor. If the wooden portion is in touch with the floor, the wood may get damped due to moisture on the floor and the cajon's sound may be affected.

The sitting mat is cut from a yoga mat. You can also do the same or you can even go for foam mat. Any cushion will do in this context.

After laying the mat, the final product looks like below. By the way, I have applied a colour in the slapping surface and the back, just for a good look. I liked it.

If you want to listen to a demo, here is a video.

Thanks for visiting cajon making episode and DIY woodworking India.

The making of cajon drum - DIY woodworking India

The making of cajon drum(fixing laminate) - DIY woodworking India

Hey everyone. Welcome to DIY woodworking India.

I have fixed laminates on both the sides of the drum. I have kept it for a couple of hours without disturbing it so that laminates fit properly on the underlying cajon structure. For first part of the cajon making, please visit my post The making of cajon drum - DIY woodworking India. I have described about the structure, plan and the final product there.

In this part, I will touch upon the steps which I have not mentioned in that post such as fixing the laminates, giving it the final touch etc.

Laminate cutters are available in local hardware shops. The one I have is shown below:

Mark the line on the laminate you want to cut, place a ruler along with it and then draw the line with the cutter along the line. You have to draw the same line or mark couple of times until the laminate piece can be removed with a gentle pull.

Once pieces are ready, apply wood adhesive on the back of those and on the cajon body. Basically, we need to apply adhesives on both the surfaces which will join.

Once you have applied adhesive, put the laminates pieces gently on the cajon body. Be careful of putting it accurately on the surface so that you don't need to remove and put it again. For laminates bigger in size for example, 4'x8', we keep 4-5 sticks on the surface and then fix the laminate over it so that we can adjust the position of the laminate. Now, we have to put tape so that the laminate is fixed properly in the edges. This tape is known as masking tape. After it is fixed, keep the cajon unit at rest for a few hours till the adhesives dry. It will be be written on adhesive usage instruction how long you should wait for it to dry.

Here is a demo of my cajon drum.

How to motivate yourself for woodworking - DIY woodworking India

How to motivate yourself for woodworking - DIY woodworking India

Hey all! Welcome to DIY woodworking India. Today, from my personal experience I can tell you, keeping yourself motivated is the "key" for anything you want to achieve. Now you may question me why do you want to do woodworking. The answer is not straightforward. Its not about woodworking. Its about everything you do, applicable to anything. Why do we read newspaper? To update ourselves about happenings around us and the world, isn't it? But we can live without it too. Choice is ours. Similarly, to develop a skill or to gain practical knowledge about something, you need to spend time with it. Take swimming for an example. Ok, now you will say - swimming is fine, but why woodworking? I will ask you - why some people collect postal stamp as a hobby?

Am I making some sense?

What motivates me to do woodworking? Sometime in mid 2013, I was going through a management blog - it was on marketing I believe. There it said, the world we are in today is all because of buying and selling. It asked everyone to build something - may it be a toy, craft and may be a writeup about something and then sell it. It also said about value addition to it. It all started from that point.

I remember, a cajon drum was in my mind. The average market price was almost INR10k at that moment.

At the beginning, I had to invest some money for tools required for woodworking. It costed me around INR 6-7k to buy a drill kit and a jig saw. I had to recover that money from the product I was going to build. The total expenses was around INR10k including plywood, adhesives and other miscellaneous things.

Finally, I started working on the cajon drum. From the plywood I had bought, 6 cajons would be born. I set the price at INR3.5k. Compared to 10k in the current market, 3.5k was a real cheap deal! When my first DIY cajon was born, I posted free ads in lot of places. I started getting calls, starting from serious musician to enthusiasts people. They came, tried it out, negotiated the price. At the end, one guy came who wanted to gift it to his musician brother. He gave me 3k!

That's it! I gave me immense motivation to build more of it and get a value out of it which people will like. I was really happy when people came to my house looking for the cajon drum and tried it out and praised me for the awesome bass the drum had! It was a great feeling. By the way, I did  lot of research how to maximise the bass of the drum, trust me. Uncle Helmholtz helped me a lot!

Finally, I could sell 3 of them. Having recovered all the money, I started woodworking more seriously.

I build couple of beds out of wood - all foldable.

Then, a tea table, dining table, and puja ghar.

Finally, building my kitchen interiors.


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