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Broken Rute

Well......it broke. It lasted through 1/3 of the piece.

Actually it was quite dramatic. Wood was flying everywhere. It sounded less than what we wanted so I'm not concerned about it breaking. We tried the fiberglass version which did not break but sounded even worse.
My next attempt is to use flexible plastic. These are the plastic stakes that a lawn care company uses when they apply pesticides and herbicides. I cleaned them and used epoxy, electrical tape and heat shrink tubing similar to the first attempt. I took them to the rehearsal and tried them and they sounded like...….well...….plastic. UGH!
Bamboo is stronger than wood and sounds so much better than plastic, but finding bamboo long enough and thin enough for this project is difficult. I did find some bamboo barbeque skewers at the grocery store: 12 inches long, 1/8 inch diameter, 100 for $2.

These things look like something from an Indiana Jones movie. If I had a Brazilian frog that point could be lethal. I stacked 4 groups of these skewers on top of each other and offset each of them slightly to get a length of 18 inches. The points were placed down so as I taped them together they were covered except for the very bottom. These I covered with more tape and capped with a plastic cap.

Since they overlap each other the ends are spread which will hopefully give the sound that we want. Tonight night is our rehearsal so we'll see how this works.









































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