Making My Mbira (Thumb Piano)

This was an experiment I conducted - making a Mbira or Thumb Piano out of some things I picked up at the thrift store.

First I went to the store and here's what I picked up:

        A solid wood salad bowl $2.00  

        An incense burner (for a shim to leave more room for the tines to resinate) $.75

        A decorative wire and sheet metal peacock $2.00

        A wire memo stand $1.00

Then I went to the Hardware store and picked up:

         A grounding strip (about 4 1/2" long) $4.68

         Screws $0.98

So I didn't take a separate picture of this, but essentially you just drive the screws through the 3 empty slots in the grounding bar and send them straight through the shim (in this case incense burner) and body (salad bowl).

I cut up my memo stand and peacock using pliers, wire cutters and a metal grinder/chop saw.

The last step was just to insert the tines into the grounding bar - one tine per screw and tighten down the screws. I bent some of the tines upward so that they had more room to vibrate and left more room underneath for the bottom wires to vibrate as well.