Lonnie Ezell

Last summer, I made a bodhran. It now looks like I’m going to start doing a new project every summer, which is cool by me!

This summer’s project is a 5-string fretless, hollow-body bass guitar. Or maybe semi-hollow is the real description. Not sure. And once again this is a project that will show you don’t need thousands of dollars in tools to be able to make something cool. Granted, it would definitely have been easier, I’m sure.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve just started pulling together the design and plan. This picture is my inspiration for the bass. I only wish I had bookmarked the site of the creator. If anyone knows, please let me know. This was a custom job he had done for someone and not a stock bass, so finding it again has proven difficult.

I love the idea of the jazz-type bridge and string connection, so am definitely going with that. Also shooting for a sound that is much like an upgright, but with a bit more modern edge to it. Wish me luck!

 The body is a big block of Ash that has been glued together to get a large enough block of wood. The top – was an awesome steal from Luthier’s Mercantile. It was listed as a medium flame redwood, and very good pricing (on clearance) compared to most of the topwoods out there. When it arrived I was thrilled to see that it has a bit of that burled feel to it. Beautiful piece of wood!

Getting Started

The first step in the actual construction was to glue the two pieces of ash together. That proved to be a bit of a challenge since my plane didn’t seem to be working well for it. Turns out, I probably just didn’t know how to use it well. Have had it for a while, but never used it much. I got it working much better for the top, though.

Then I used a small orbital sander to smooth out the sides and get them fairly level. The lumber had a slight bow to it that became much more obvious once the sides were glued together. That took a while and is one of those places where, if you wanted to do this for a living, investing in a big powered plane sander would come in handy. This took around 2 hours to level out both sides to an acceptable flatness. Since I will be doing more sanding once the body is put together, and will be routing out the other side to make a hollow body, I didn’t need perfection at this point.

Preparing the Top

The next step was to get the edges on the top wood ready for gluing. For some reason, finding good information on how to do this online or even in the books I had proved difficult. I finally stumbled across a video on YouTube that showed someone doing it this way. Worked like a charm.

The two bookmatched sides are placed on top of each other, with the two sides that will join facing out. Using a block on the back of the work area to make sure the boards stay in place is a must. Then, I put a piece of cardboard below the wood to lift them off of the surface a bit and give the planer plenty of room. Can’t have only portions of the wood getting shaved. You then set your plane to be as small and as level as you can so that you’re only ripping out small portions of the wood at a time. This makes sure you don’t eat away at more of the wood then you need to. After all, this is the edge where the patterns come together so the less wood you need to remove the better it looks.

The goal here is to get as perfect as a match between the sides when glued together as possible. Keep holding it up to a bright light with the ends together until you have a perfect match.

Gluing the Top

I didn’t get enough photos of this process but the steps are pretty simple. Put several nails along the edge of one piece of the top. Then put a strip of cardboard or something about 1/4″ thick or so under where the joint will be. Place the other right next to it, fairly tightly, and place nails very tight against this other half. At this point, the middle will be raised up. You’ll put some glue down one edge and then push the pieces down together. The pressure from the nails on both sides will hold the wood in place until it dries. You’ll also need something putting pressure on it from the top to make sure it stays in place. That’s why the toolbox is sitting there.

Cutting the Body

A bandsaw is the preferred method, but the orbital jig saw worked just fine. Maybe a little slow, though. The main thing to watch out for is the sharp turns. Don’t feel like you need to do it all in one path. Remove large chunks of the outer wood so it’s easier to manage. Especially around the tighter turns.

Clean Up

And here’s where we stand after this last weekend. I took the orbital saw and did a rough sanding of the edges to smooth out some not-nice areas where the jigsaw and my inexperience left much to be desired. The basic shape is there, though I need to do some careful cleanup around the neck joint before I’m comfortable calling this portion done.

Oh, and finally decide whether I’m doing a set-in (glued) neck or a bolt on. My original thought was a set-in, but that leaves no room for error, so I might be rethinking that.

As promised, here’s the first of the monthly songs that I’ll be posting here. This one might be a little bit of cheat, since I actually had this already partially finished, but I wanted to get it finished and fully fleshed out.

This month’s song is Tell Me Ma, a traditional Irish (and possibly British before that?) children’s song, that has nonetheless become a popular tune in Ireland. I first heard it performed by the wonderful band, Gaelic Storm.

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Life’s been crazy. Mostly the band, family (with new Boy Scouts thrown in the mix) and new “job”. The new job is, in many ways, fantastic, but I’ve found myself doing little outside of coding PHP and HTML. There’s a joy in that, but not when that’s all that you do.

So it’s time to find the Breath again.

What is the Breath? If you’ve read my novel, Daughter of the Sun, you’ll know. For those that haven’t, it is the spark inside of you that allows you to create magic. It is something that I believe is inherent in everyone, but we have, so far, forgotten how to use it. It’s when we find the things that give us joy, and watch that joy blossom into something special. That’s the magic.

It feels like I’ve been floating along the ride of 0′s and 1′s and gradually losing grasp on the magic that is inside of me. If it wasn’t for the Sea Dogs, I might have already lost it.

Time to start again, and start again slow enough that I can build up the habits, the muscle memory, that will let me take this for the long haul.

Here’s the plan:

• One new song recorded every month. Many times this will be a new whistle tune that I’ve learned, but I am going to do it up right with guitar and percussion, as well. This will help me grow as an artist, develop skills and arranging/mixing skills. Most of those items will go up here for free. Every year, I plan on releasing a new CD of the best of the tunes.
• Start writing again. I haven’t set any specifics yet, but we got to start somewhere, right? I have two short stories that I want to finish up before getting back into Book Two (yes, I’m well aware it is way past due, and I apologize.)

Neither of these items form a new ‘job’ and both have plenty of breathing room in them to allow for real life and the job, but to still give me enough forward motion to find the life again. To feel alive, not just like I’m floating along, grasping onto a rotten log and hoping that it won’t break on me.

Here’s a quick audio (about 2:16 in length) of me goofing off on the new bodhran. It’s nothing fancy and contains plenty of errors, but should give an idea what it sounds like.

It was recorded with a single microphone. The first 2:00 is recorded from behind the drum, then I switched it out and moved the mic in front of the drum to see what kind of a difference there was.

I did nothing to the sound file except to compress it for a better sound of all of the little bits. No EQ was harmed in the making of this audio.

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Voila!

Finis!

It’s a wrap!

That’s right – this bodhran is done. More or less. All of the crucial parts are done, and it plays like a drum. There are a few things left to do, like taping the head, applying a bit of lannolin or neatsfoot to condition it a bit.

The Sound

The sound is pretty good, especially considering the skin has not been played in yet. The front of the skin is nice and smooth. I don’t know who is responsible for preparing these heads, but they did a pretty good job, it seems like. After soaking in water a couple of times (I didn’t like the tension the first time around) the back of the hide is a little bit rough, so I’ll need to go through and sand that down a bit to reduce the hand sliding noise.

It also needs to be taped. In a bad way. In case you’re not familiar with it, many of the high-end bodhrans come with the edges of the head wrapped in what is basically electrical tape. I was unable to find any at Lowes that was wide enough to use. At least, I couldn’t find any that wasn’t duct-tape gray. Not exactly the look I was going for. All the store had was the 3/4″ tape and I would prefer 1-1/2″ or 2″ wide tape to do this, so that may end up as a special order.

What does the tape do? It helps control the overtones and helps to focus the sound of the drum. If you hit  a drum that hasn’t been taped, you’ll hear the good thunking bass, but you’ll also hear a lot of higher-frequency sounds, or ringing. The tape helps to get rid of that. This makes it sound better, punchier, more focused. It also gets the drum out of the high frequency range occupied by the human voice and the acoustic guitar, which makes it easier to mix in both live and studio situations.

Other Details

First off, being able to tune this thing is awesome. If I ever buy another bodhran, you can be sure that finger-tunable is on the list of must-haves. If you are getting ready to buy your first one… put that on your must-have list. Well, maybe save it for your second one, where you have actually saved up for the good one.

If you look closely where the skin head meets (oops – was that politically correct?) meets the tuning ring, you’ll see something warm and fuzzy sticking out. What is that? you ask. I ended up stapling a strap of leather along the top of the tuning ring. I originally got this idea from Hedwitschak Drums.

When I first saw him do this in one of his videos about making the bodhran, I thought that was kinda weird. Then I thought it was a great idea, because I really hate the harshness of the rim shots on most bodhrans. Well, it seemed like the leather would help that sound better. And it does. Much better. The rim shots now actually seem to fit in with the rest of the drum strikes.

According to Christian Hedwitschak, though, it does a lot more. To quote from his web page:

This leather strip works like a buffer zone. I makes the whole drum a bit less frail for de-tuning and allows the drum skin to swing out better in the edge area. It also softens a bit the rim shot sound, takes away some ringing overtones and avoids a possibly squeaking of the skin.

Now, I have a feeling that I used thicker leather than he uses, but so far I’m loving it. Granted, I’ve only played it for about 15 minutes. That was all the bashing the wife could stand listening to. <smirk>

To Boldly Go

I gotta say, this has been an awesome experience. There were many times along the way that I wasn’t sure if this was going to work out. Or be playable when it was done. Each time, though, I pushed through and kept believing. I kept listening to that inner voice who said, “It’s okay. Everything is going to work out.” And it did. Sure, there may be flaws, but that’s the nature of the beast. That’s a part of the learning process. And I’m not embarrassed by the flaws. Instead, I look at the entire drum and go.. you know what? I made this. And it works.

From here, it’s time to learn how this bodhran wants to be played. It’s time to put in more practice time and get where I wouldn’t be embarrassed to sit in a session. I don’t need to be a master player. I just want to be good enough that the song is better for having a drum in it. I want to enhance the song, not drive it. And not put another notch in the belt of all of those other musicians that cringe when they see a bodhran player sit down in the session.

The journey has just begun.

Emptiness.

Silence.

Thin tendrils of music floating along the breeze, hoping to be found, to be plucked from the ethers and formed through the strings, pipes or percussion instruments.

How to grab it? I try, but can’t find it. Too empty. Too much sorrow. Where can I find the joy that tames the music and makes it shine? Where do I find the music?

Performance isn’t necessary to make music. In many respects I wonder if the Irish culture has it correct. Friends and strangers gather at a local pub. They pull up chairs and take turns. One person leads the music. The others join in. Following. Creating. Then another leads another tune. Anyone who knows it joins in. Music follows. Joy follows.

For one reason: the music.

We’ve all heard the old adage: If a tree falls in the forest but no one witnesses it, does it make a noise? When it comes to music, I believe the answer is a resounding, “Yes!” Even when there is no audience, there is always the other musicians to hear. To join in. To sing. Stomp feet in time. To get caught in the melody. To mess up a phrase and laugh it off. The music is there. The joy is there.

Creation is there.

For me, at least, I’m realizing that is what it’s about. It’s creating music with friends. It’s enhancing someone else’s song. Bringing it to life. During a performance, it’s bringing smiles to the audience. Or tears. It’s seeing them get swept up in the music: tapping their feet; bobbing their head in time. Even when they’re not watching, I like to think that what I’m playing is somehow making their conversations–and their memories of that night–better somehow.

I guess that’s what it boils down to. Creation of moments. Creation of *emotions*.

That’s what I need out of music. That’s when it truly shines to me. When the thrill is there. When we are creating.

I need to create. I’ve known that for years, but never been truly able to see what it was that made that seemingly selfish desire so valuable. But I’m starting to see it now.

It keeps me happy. It keeps my spirit lifted up. It hopefully makes a small bright moment in the day for whoever I come into contact with. It does that one small thing to help make the world be just a tiny bit better. When I’m in a joyous spot, those around me are lifted up. When I’m not, am I dragging down those around me? Making their lives worse? If there must be light to have shadow, good to have evil, it follows that staying joyous makes the world better and staying morose and empty can only make the world worse.

It’s the small things, isn’t it, that spread. It’s the small things that fester.

It’s time to listen to music all day again. To make playlists that keep me uplifted. That inspire me. It’s time to do my part, once again, to make the world shine. One act of creation can overthrow countless acts of destruction.

It’s time to become Creators.

Ok, so I don’t know how exciting any of these posts are to you anyone out there. I suppose, if you start on the adventure of creating your own bodhran, you might be interested. If not, maybe they act as a good form of Dramamine, so it’s still useful. But I’ll keep posting here until they’re done. Then I’ll post a short video of me attempting to play the thing, just so you can get an idea of how it sounds, and if it’s worth your time.

It’s exciting to me, though. Any time you embark on the act of creation, you let a little bit of yourself free. You put a little bit more of yourself out there for the world to see and I suppose it could be scary to some. Heck, this bodhran definitely has it’s issues, and I’ve been trying to make sure I include those as warning signs down the road to this particular creation.

It’s funny, I’ll hear people say, “I will try anything, once.” They wear it like a badge of honor, as they should. It takes courage to attempt the unknown. However, these same people will scoff at people who are trying to build something new, or write  a novel, or train for a marathon. Wait. What happened to trying something new? Does that only apply to drugs, sex, and food? Bah!

To all of you out there daring to make something, daring to get out of your comfort zone, or daring to try something new and are prepared to fail: I salute you. You are the courageous people the world needs more of. Keep creating.

Finishing

With that PSA out of the way, it’s back to the bodhran.

It’s downstairs in the basement, right now, letting the final coat of clear coat dry. It’s an exciting time, watching the luster on the Golden Oak-colored wood dry. The accents of black set it off and give a professional appearance. It’s a beauty.

Until you rotate it a bit and look around inside. Then you notice the scars and pock-marks and realize it’s amateur hour.

Here’s a bit of advice to all you stainers. It’s something I new, but didn’t pay careful enough attention to, I guess. Make sure you get all of the wood glue off of the wood when it’s wet. It is a fine-balance between having enough glue to hold everything in place, and too much so that it seeps out of the cracks. I always thought this was a situation where too much was a good thing. You simply wipe it away with a wet rag.

And it appears to work. However, if you look closely at the pic, on the inside where the black band meets the rest. See that white streak? That’s where I had wiped the glue with a wet rag. I even went over the spot with a light sanding. I’m not sure what I’ll do differently next time I try something like this. If you know how to get around that problem, please leave a comment.

I also have 4 dime-sized circles of almost unstained wood on the outside. This is where glue had dried and I had sanded it down. However, knowing that all I had was a veneer and I didn’t want to sand through it, I didn’t sand enough, though it appeared that the glue was gone.

Oh, well. These are the battle scars, and I’ll wear them proudly, if need be. They are proof of my tuition to the school of hard knocks, as they call it. Experience. Either way I know that, when I’m done with the drum and start playing on, I’ll have the awesome knowledge that this Act of Creation was mine. And every rhythm that I make on it, is another tiny Act of Creation.

Had a blast floating and camping with friends this weekend, though the temps did a touch on the sweltering side. And the kids managed to miss the girls and the beads. On Sunday, though, I did get a chance to get some more work into the bodhran. I’ve now got the frame ready for a final sanding and staining. Getting close!

End Caps

Since I’m not a master woodworker (you’ve figured that out by now, right?) the ends on the veneers didn’t quite match up perfectly.

No problem! I’ve got this one figured out.

I ended up staining the leftover veneer with some Ebony wood stain that I had from the Cajon project. The idea is to create a simple end-cap that has decorative uses as well as cleans up the binding.

It worked out well, with the only tricky part being getting a tight fit. The secret there was simply to use scissors on the stained veneer strip to take away tiny slivers of wood where it wasn’t fitting. And to keep at it until it magically decided it was the right size.

The end caps are for both the inside and outside of the frame. I made them directly across from each other so it gives the impression that a single piece of solid wood was inserted through it all.

The Inner Ring

The inner ring serves a dual purpose.

The primary purpose I used it for was to provide enough room for my fingers to actually twist the tuning lugs with scraping a hole through the frame. I have this feeling that neither my fingers nor the drum would enjoy that.

The second reason (and this round’s bonus item!) is that it provides a bit more stability to a frame that started off a little wishy-washy. Though, even without the inner ring installed, it was already feeling much more stable.

As you can tell, I opted to stain it Ebony, also. No reason other than a bit of contrast. OK. So, maybe I just happened to steal the look from one of my favorite bodhrans, but we don’t need to spread that nasty rumor, now do we?

Final Shaping

 Once the inner ring was glued in and dry, it was time for the final bit of fun before calling it ready to color.

The top outside edge of the frame (that’s the part where the dead goat will lie against) needs to rounded/angled to create a good edge for the skin to lie against. And sharp edges are not allowed at this part. Otherwise, all of the work I do to prepare and mount a skin would be for nothing as the edge would act as a butter knife, slowly sawing through the skin.

I also repeated this to the bottom inside edge for a couple of reasons.

First, it’s supposed to help the acoustics a bit, but I’m kinda iffy on that. I suppose that it might allow a small area for the sound waves to escape a bit earlier than they might otherwise, but I’m not convinced that would make all that much difference.

The second reason is that whole butter-knife aspect. Except this time it would be sawing against my arm. And that’s definitely something that I don’t want going on. I mean, this is supposed to be a fun thing to play, right?

I made sure to round the exterior edges for a more polished look everywhere and thought I was done, Until I realized there were a few gaps in the wood where small pieces of the plywood had chipped out. Time to break out the wood filler! Good thing it was on the edges, since these will be either hidden under the goat skin, or colored black along the bottom side of the drum.

Once that dries, I’ll give it one last final sanding with some really fine sand-paper and break out the stain.

Good times!

So, I had a few minutes during my lunch break to work on the next step of my tunable bodhran.

I gotta admit, it’s coming out sturdier than I was afraid of yesterday. Very happy about that. There’s still the slightest amount of give, but I’m hoping that won’t last past adding the next piece or two.

First – a prelude: Look at that picture. That is one of the coolest things about making something from scratch. That first time when you can really start to see the shape of the finished product. Such a very cool feeling. And a slightly addicting one, the art of creation. Hmm. Maybe that’s what this blog should be about…. the Art of Creation.

End prelude. Back to the normally scheduled topic.

After pulling the frame with it’s 2 layers solidly glued together out of the mold, I did a quick sanding of the tops and bottoms with the orbital sander to make sure it was all smooth and actually felt like a single piece.

The next step was the veneer. I’ve got some Maple veneer from and old project that was the right size, so I trimmed to fit and tested it by placing it inside. Good to go. Then the thought struck me… “How the heck am I going to put enough pressure on the veneer to keep it steady while it’s glued?” I knew how to do the outside, but the inside?

Looked around the room a bit. There’s a bunch of stuff in here, since it’s just the unfinished part of the basement with lots of miscellany being stored. Nothing that would work, though. Then my eyes passed over the scrap wood that hasn’t been used for anything, yet.

Bingo!

I had a 4″-5″ strip of scrap ply available. A quick job of cutting it to size, checking fit, sanding the end, checking fit, rinsing and repeating and I had the perfect thing to hold it in place, apply pressure equally to all ends. And since I was going to have to use this wood to cut (2) 1-1/2″ strips from later, anyway, it seemed like the perfect solution.

That’s all of the time I had for this today, and nothing will happen over the weekend since I’ll be away floating and camping and what not. Enjoy your weekend.

Oh – and go create!

A couple of months ago, I started teaching myself how to play the bodhran. I’ve had an inexpensive one for years that I never played. A year or so ago, I pulled it out to learn how to play it and, as luck would have it, the skin had started to rip off the rim. With the help of a band-mate, I bought a new goat skin and put it on.

Then it sat on the shelf for a while. Oh, I tried picking it up and learning, but to little avail. Until one of our band members moved away. He’ll still make it to the occasional gig, and he’s a phenomenal bodhran player, but there’s still gigs that we won’t have him on. I figured now was the perfect time to learn. We have some shanties that just don’t sound the same without bodhran or percussion.

I have always had a tendency to want to build the instruments that I get interested in. The biggest problem is that I don’t really have the tools to do it. So, a few of those projects never really got off the ground. I built a cajon (or box-drum for those of you not in-the-know) and it works really well. The urge struck again, so this will be my account of the journey to build a bodhran.

Goals

Since I’m going to the trouble of making a drum, the goal is to get it as close to pro-quality as I can. I did a ton of research, watched a lot of YouTube videos, and sketched out a plan to make it work.

For those looking for some of the best bodhrans out there, be sure to check out the following makers:

• Hedwitschak Drums – some of my favorites.
• Metloef Drums – some more beauties, awesome tuners, and a very helpful builder.
• Albert Alfonso Drums – excellent maker here in the USA.
• Seamus O’Cane – arguably the best traditional-style bodhran maker alive.
• Brendan White – heard great stuff about his drums, and the couple of YouTube vids I found make me agree.

It will be tunable. That’s a must. And the tuners must be finger-tunable so I don’t need to carry around a wrench. (I ended up getting a full set of 8 tuners from Metloef. Very awesome tuners. Highly recommended.)

I currently have an 18″ bodhran and it’s a decent size. Seems to be about the standard for the cheap ones you get from Pakistan. I wanted something smaller and deeper. The tone I want to get always seems to come from the smaller, deeper drums that I see in the videos. I was originally going to make a 16″ drum, but logistics got the better of me and I’m now building a 15″ because that’s what a 1/2 sheet of plywood will get you.

And I want a decent sized angled area between the outer rim and inner rim to provide a pretty good target for quieter ‘rim-shots’ than what my non-tunable drum has.

First Steps

The Mold

The first thing to do was to construct a mold to help hold the sides in place.

This is simply two pieces of 1/2″ plywood with 4 x 4″ tall 1″x2″ spacers in between. Nothing special.

Remember how I said I don’t really have all of the right tools to do this? The circle was cut with a Dremel and a routing attachement. Believe it or not, it actually worked out pretty good, though did taking a bit of putzing with as the bit kept coming loose as I had to go around and around the circle digging deeper and deeper.

I used 4″ spacing blocks because I’m making a 6″ deep shell and figured that would be better. Looking back, I’d opt to make them a little bit shorter to give myself a little more working room for clamps and such.

The Sides

For the wood, I opted to go the simple route and use bending luan (a hardwood plywood) because I heard that it could be done and makes a decent rim. The stuff I’m using is 1/4″ thick, and the shell will be 2 layers.

Once the pieces were cut, it was time to sand the sides of the plywood until they were nice and smooth. This will, hopefully, let the glue hold better.

I cut it so that it was about 1/2″ longer than it needed it be. This let me use a splice joint to overlap the ends and glue them together so that the joint is almost invisible. Not that it matters all that much since I’ll be gluing a veneer on both the insides and outsides, but I was hoping it might lend a touch extra strength to the pretty flimsy feeling plywood.

 I cheated a bit on the splice joint. Remember – don’t really have the right tools for the job here.

Since I didn’t have what seemed to be the right stuff for the job, I clamped the wood down to the workbench and used an orbital sander to get the right shape.

Somehow, I got pretty close with the joints and they actually fit pretty good. There’s a small gap on the outside of the first layer that I’ll have to fill in with epoxy and sawdust, or wood filler, or something.

Gluing the Layers

 First thing I did was to spread some glue on one end of the splice and clamp it up in the mold. I used Titebond III, but I’m sure any good wood glue would work. After this sat for an hour or so I was ready for the next layer.

The next layer was even easier. I placed it squarely inside the other rim and marked the place to cut it. I wasn’t planning on doing a splice joint here, but a butt joint, so I cut it just slightly longer than needed.

Putting it back inside I checked the fit. Took it out and sanded a bit off the edge and put it back in once more. This time, it was a solid fit. Time to glue it up.

I placed some waxed paper below the mold to keep the shell from getting glued to the worktable, then slathered plenty of glue all around the inside of the outer layer. I snapped the inside layer in place and clamped the joint.

Nothing left to do at this point but wait.

I was a bit nervous at first, because the two layers, freshly glued, seemed a bit too flexible still to make a good, solid rim. I checked it an hour or two later and it’s much stiffer now, with very little give. There’s still another small layer to add so I think everything will be fine.

To Be Continued…

This is just the start of the project, but I figured I was actually doing something other than work so I should probably post a bit about it.

I’m looking forward to working on this more. But for now… back to work.