Experimental Wood Block

(This is not posted as a project because I felt it was just an experiment, I’m not completely happy with the result and I didn’t put finish on it.)

The pile of wooden blocks that I got as cast offs from the pre-school at my church has been living in a box on my floor. It’s been tasking me. Today I decided to give a try of creating a musical wood block from a block of wood.
I simply chucked a 3/8 inch bit in my drill press and set the depth and a fence as a guide. The slot on each side is offset from the other. I made one slot about 1/2 inch shorter (along the length of the block) than the one on the opposite side of the block.
Then I used a rasp to sort of widen the outer edges of the slots to maybe deflect the sound outwards. Using the drill press as a ‘ghetto router’ leaves some uneven edges which would have to be smoothed either with lots of sanding or maybe some chisel work. I sanded mine a bit. The other thing I don’t so much like about this method is the series of points in the bottom of the slots from the Forstner bit.
The block sounds OK and had two different tones, but I’m not ecstatic with the quality of the result. If I bought a really long (2inch) straight bit for my router I could get a better result. I’m not sure if my router could even handle that.

-- Ni faru ion el ligno!