An outdoor hockey game fills the air with shouts of joy and the swoosh of skates. Why not add something else? Make a marimba out of hockey sticks to enhance the soundtrack at the local frozen pond with the trill of a calypso tune. Marimbas are just pieces of wood, precisely cut and assembled, that resonate over a chamber of air. You have those broken hockey sticks that look curiously like wide piano keys when cut down to length. You just need some metal tubing for resonators, some metal bar, and music lessons.
A typical marimba will have 37 bars (keys), including the sharps and flats, providing three octaves. The lowest and highest notes are C. Striking a key sends a column of vibrating air down the tube below, and the length of this vibrating column of air gives pitch. The shorter the bar and tube, the higher the note, and the longer the bar and tube, the lower the note. The shortest key will be about 3 1/2” long, and the longest key will be about 6”. The length of the resonating tubes depends on the tube diameter.
Find four metal rods about 3/8” in diameter and the length of the keyboard. Look for something that will not bend when the tubes are suspended from it. Two of these rods run through each bar, and you will have two rows of bars, one for whole tones and the other for semitones, like a piano keyboard. The holes you drill through the bars should be slightly larger than the rod so each bar can vibrate independently from the adjoining bars. Felt spacers between the bars will help maintain this independence and improve the keyboard appearance.
All the resonating tubes will be different lengths. To add them to the marimba, start with the lowest note. Cut a length of tubing that you think would be about right. Near the top, drill 2 holes exactly opposite each other. Pass a string through these holes and suspend the tube beneath the centre of the longest bar and as close to the bar as possible. File a little notch into the rod to keep the string in place. Get near a piano or electronic keyboard and plonk on the bar over the end of the tube. Keep shortening the tube until you’re as close to C below middle C as possible. (Of course, if the tube is already too short, use it for another note and cut a longer piece of tubing for the lowest one.) That’s one note out of the way, 36 more to go.
When you’re done, you will be desperately looking for something to set the marimba on. You need to make a frame. Hockey sticks to the rescue. Legs? Hockey sticks. Mallets? Hockeysticks!