Project 1 – Cajon Drum – Single Post Update

I’ve finally put the diy cajon drum build process in a single post which now includes a demo video.

Intro
I’ve now started my own diy Cajon effort. I’ll put together some proper plans for this once they are all finalised but for starters I’ve gone a 500mm high version with length and depth 300mm.

The two sides and the top and bottom are made from 12mm plywood. To try and give a bit more resonance I’m using a thinner 6mm plywood for the back. For the playing surface I’m going with 4mm plywood.

Stage 1
After cutting the wood to the relevant sizes I began by making the initial frame of the drum. I’m using glue to try and hold most of the drum together and so after checking for accuracy the sides were glued to the top and bottom. To try and get a strong bond the frame was clamped together with sash clamps and left over night.

So I now have something that looks like this :-

Stage 2
Continuing my diy cajon project I have now cut the front and back side of the drum. The front side is made of 3mm plywood and the back 6mm. For the back of the drum I have cut two 70mm diameter sound holes. Ideally I would have gone with the one diameter 140mm hole but didn’t have a large enough hole cutter.

Stage 3
The next part of my diy cajon project was working out how to get a good snare sound on the drum. I purchased a 12″ snare off the web from Thomann which I planned to string across the drum.

Unfortunately the snare was still a little too long so I ended up screwing one side of the snare into the front frame. Two small strips of wood were then glued to either side to add strength. I then attached the snare string on the other side to a simple homemade tensioning system. For the tensioning system I cut a grove in the side of the drum and then put two small pieces of wood either side with a bolt through the middle.

The snare string goes over the top of the drum seated in two small saw cuts and attaches to one of the pieces of wood. To tension the snare you loosen the wing nut and simply pullback and re-tighten.

I’ve put together some plans for building Cajon Drums. There may be a some errors but it should be enough to get you started. Cajon Drum Plans.

Big Images
As requested here are some much larger pictures of my diy Cajon. Click to enlarge.

Cajon Drum Video
Here’s a video of the drum in action.

Good luck with your Cajon construction.