Can i build a cajon

Im a woodworker for many years and my son wants one of these. Glad to see a link to Amazon for the decent bit of birch for the front. You do a great job on your one, love the dye bit, nice.

Would you possibly take a photo of the snare position in the drum. Im not into acoustics but would like to get this right, and even be able to adjust it for my son also. Thanks for all the good advice. Hi Richard. I am sorry, but we are no longer in contact with the author of this article. You want to position the snare very close to the front panel without touching it. I want to make a Cajon for my grandson. Can you suggest dimensions better suited for a 3 year old.

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Thank you! Hi Ari. Any PVA woodworking glue would work fine. I use Titebond 3. You will have to make sure that they two sheets form a gap free bond. How can I get a pdf of the plans since nothing works in the blog? Thanks Dennis Hoffman — dennishoffman comcast. Hi Dennis. If you are having trouble accessing this please try hard refreshing the page or using a different browser.

If you are still having trouble accessing the plans please contact our customer service team at and they can assist you with this. The dimensions are similar but critical as a standing half-wave cancels itself.

It just works better and lasts longer. Hi Derek. Hi Brian. If you have any questions, please contact our customer service team at and they would be happy to assist you.

This link has been fixed. I am sorry for any inconvenience. The size is correct as stated. It needs to fit between the the rabbets on the sides, top and bottom. Hi Joe. There is a bottom. Is there any way you can put the drawing link back up? I get an error saying it is no longer at that url.. Hi Sue. I am sorry you are having trouble viewing the plan. Please try hard refreshing your page or using a different browser. If you are still having issues viewing the plan, please contact our customer service team at When I built mine I bought a snare drum mechanism and it worked great:.

Can you send me the information or working link? Deankathycoppell twc. Hi Dean. I am sorry you are having trouble viewing this. If you are still having trouble viewing, please contact our customer service team at As stated in Jan, this link has never worked. Do you really want this many people phoning in for help or can IT just fix the link? This all seems weird especially for members. We were not aware that the link had been broken after supplying the link nor had we been notified up until this point.

After 8 years there is still not a link included in the article, nor does any link in the comments section work. Brilliant WGOA! This could be considered a click bait article for views. Thank you for letting us know that the links provided in past comments was no longer working. We never supply an article in the hopes that our information is not up to date.

Just to let you know, the link finally works. You should tell people that it does not work in the Chrome browser. It now works in Safari and Firefox. However, before it did not work in any of them. You will continue to get complaints until you fix it for Chrome arguably the most popular browser or at least notify users not to use Chrome. In searching for any info about drums with wooden heads, I discovered cajons and eventually, this Instructable.

The thing that I'm not entirely satisfied with is using plywood for the head. Here's why:. When the strings are plucked, strummed or whatever, it vibrates the bridge which bears against the instrument's top and causes it in turn to vibrate, producing soundwaves that behave similarly to those from a drumhead being struck.

Better-quality stringed instruments use a plank of solid wood or more often, a bookmatched pair with the seam running lengthwise from neck to tail as the top of the guitar. The directionality of the wood's grain seems to create more "musical" tones than plywood which, with its interlocking grain, essentially forms a homogenous membrane; plywood-topped guitars, double-bases, etc. Since So, if stringed instruments sound better if the top material is solid wood not plywood , wouldn't it make sense that the wooden head of a drum would likewise sound better if it was solid, rather than plywood?

Yeah, I understand that a plank of spruce, mahogany or other common stringed instrument tonewoods would be more fragile, expensive and difficult to work. But my question is, would the sounds it produces be more "musical" than plywood? Reply 5 years ago. Indeed a solid wood face will give better sound.

A source for this if you are a scrounger is an old clothes dresser. The bottoms of really old drawers are often solid wood about a quarter in thick and not plywood.

This wood is aged with time and provides a much better sound than you can hope for with other material. But it is only available if you have a really old dresser that has fallen apart. That's a great idea! I frequently see old dressers pre-plywood-era being trashed and it never occurred to me that the wide planks of wood used for drawer bottoms could be repurposed for musical projects. Thanks for the suggestion! Reply 3 years ago.

If you can find a discarded piano, where there is access to the remains of the soundboard, this is can be a great source of soundboard materials foe many types of instruments, that need a resonant wood. It's true, plywood is not good and creates more of a thumping sound than a ringing timbre as does old-growth tight-grained cedar used on a good guitar.

I used just that on a large cajon and it sounds so good and is truly musical. Does the type of wood make a big difference? I think it produces the very best timbre and makes a cajon into a truly musical instrument.

Reply 6 years ago. Reply 4 years ago. I want to try and make a giant cajon- I'd guess I'd need to make a frame or brace the panels some how. I'll post up how I get on but got a few things in need to do first! Question 3 years ago on Step 6.

Used a guitar rose over the sound hole to hide my poor cutting efforts! But ordered the wrong size By Rykley! More by the author:. I'm into a lil' bit of everything I guess. More About Rykley!

Did you make this project? Don't use any glue yet, only screws. Then finish the back side by inserting all the rest of the screws. I suggest to first screw in all the ones in the middle and then the rest. Drill a bit with the 2mm bit to make it easier to insert the screws. Make sure you adjust any deviations before drilling and screwing! After all the glue from the last few steps has dried 24h , start to glue the front part. First unscrew the front part and mark the middle of a side.

Now apply some wood glue to the lower half of the front face and the frame and press it together with the help of something heavy, like water bottles or books. Make sure you don't load it to the middle of the front plate, because this will bent the sides up and buckle the front side. Alternatively turn the box around and load the back with something heavy or use supporting boards. This is the last essential step before you can play your Cajon.

As case legs I used some rubber devices I found at a hardware supply shop. They are either used as case legs or as a pad for doors to protect the wall. Just screw them in the base plate at a sufficient distance from the edge. When you got here, you already hold a working Cajon in your hands! Plug it in and see what's happening.

No, I'm just joking, there is nothing to plug in, you hit the upper front with your flat hand and make nice noise. If you want to change the sound you can install some snare wires, but this step is optional. The snare wires give a metal sound to the drum. If you don't know if you would like it, go to a music shop and try out some Cajon with and without snares.

Cut the snare wires in half and mount them on a small rectangular block of wood, then screw this to the top so that the snare wires touch the front panel from the inside. If you screw it close to the front the sound will be very hard, else the sound will rather be soft. Try it by yourself before finally fixing it. In the pictures you see how the snare wires on the block of wood are screwed to the top plate of the cajon. The snares are bent so that more than two third of the length touch the inner side of the front face.

This gives a nice snary sound for the bass and nearly no snare sound for the high taps. Meanwhile I built a second cajon and had to take other snares because the old ones were sold out and I didn't want to wait. Now these snares are more rigid than the others and fixing them the same way resulted in a very dull sound. So I used a longer rectangular block of wood and fixed it with two wooden 'u's like you can see in the picture.

By adjusting the height and the angle that the snares touch the inner front face I could adjust the sound of the snares. With this setup I have a clear bass, a snary middle sound and a rather clear high. The last step is to grind down the surface to a smooth touch. You can do it by hand, but I suggest you use a grinding machine for the job.

It's much more comfortable. Take 3 different grinding discs with roughness of 80, and Start with the 80 disc. This one is very rough and will grind down a lot if you stay to long on one place. Move over all sides uniformly. If you finished the whole cajon, wipe down the dust with a dry cloth and then with a wet cloth.

Let it dry completely before entering the second grinding cycle. Now take the disc and grind all over again. Do the same wiping as before and repeat everything finally with the disc. This one is the smoothest and the surface should be really smooth afterwards. Now you could paint it over or apply some wood conservation stuff. I used wood wax, because it is natural and gives a nice stain to the boards. Just follow the advices that come with your product. An now you are really done with the job and can finally play your own cajon.

Question 1 year ago. Does it matter if you screw on the whole front side instead of screwing half and gluing the other? Answer 1 year ago. Nice work! I've made several cajons of different designs playing with snare positions and guitar wires and they all seem to sound pretty good. I use 19mm ply for everything but the tapa which I uses some ply I bought for laser cutting which is about mm thick and perfect for the tapa.

There is one change I would recommend to your design though and that is the screws at the top for securing the tapa. I don't put in as many screws at the top and I place a small piece of card under one of them to slightly raise the wood from the frame this allows you to get a really nice slap when hit near the corners and really adds to the dynamics of the cajon.

Terrible audio, but this video shows what I mean.. Reply 4 years ago. I've noticed that a lot of Cajon players will tilt back on the instrument when playing. Leaving a gap between the floor and the bottom of the Cajon. I can only imagine this does two things. Makes it more comfortable to play and improves the sound by allowing some of the vibrations to escape from underneath and be focused toward the front.

I've used this observation to design the Cajon pictured below. My design allows for the playing surface to be more ergonomic to the player without tilting it. And the opening in the front caused by the raised bottom panel and bottom sound hole should focus more sound toward the front of the Cajon. My questions are, will the additional sound hole on the bottom degrade the sound quality in any way? If I add a sound hole on the bottom, is there a need for one on the rear panel?

And last, are there any other considerations I need to keep in mind when building this to maintain the best sound quality possible? Reply 5 years ago. Yes, most players tilt it because it is easier to play. But I have no idea what the second hole in the bottom does.

Or if it is better to have only one hole in the bottom. The wood on the back is thin, like the front surface, so to make a hole into this seems logical to me. Also it is directly opposite of the playing surface. But make a try! As long as you don't use glue, you are free to disassemble it again! And please share your experience.