Kalimba (thumb piano)

When my son was in Cub Scouts, we needed to make a musical instrument for one of his badges. While a card board box with strings on it, or a simple tin can drum would have been acceptable, I felt we needed to do something better with his den. I began searching for simple instruments that would still be something the kids would want to keep around for a while. I discovered the Kalimba and remembered seeing it played in a movie once. I also found a tongue drum design that was basically a wooden box with slots of different lengths cut into the top. Each "tongue" played a different note when struck with a rubber mallet. I started with the Kalimba. I made a simple plywood box with 8 tines made from a metal lawn rack. It sounded nice, but we settled on the tongue drums with the kids. You really couldn't play much with only 8 notes. The idea of making a better Kalimba stayed in the back of my mind for about the last 15 years... 

About the Kalimba:

The Kalimba has an interesting history. In the 1950s, an ethnomusicologist named Hugh Tracey was intrigued with the Zimbabwe Mbira musical instrument and wanted to create an instrument based on this simple thumb piano for markets outside of Africa. He built over 100 prototypes to create the modern Kalimba that uses the familiar traditional western diatonic scale and began marketing them in the early 1960s.
(source: wikipedia.org, kalimbamagic.com)

This is my version of the Kalimba, using native North American Cherry and Maple closed-grain woods for a pleasant sound and appealing design.  I wanted to use a Pennsylvania Dutch Hex image for the sound hole decoration to make it memorable for the region, but couldn't find anything that seemed appropriate so I decided to use a modified floral design.  If these instruments are popular at our craft shows, I plan to try out some other designs for engravings and sound hole shapes. 

The Kalimba is typically played using both thumbs to pluck the tines and can be played with little to no musical experience through experimentation or by following music tablature. Kalimbas typically come with 10, 17, or 21 keys with the 17-key Kalimba being the most popular design.