DIY Cajon - a Modern Take

As a long time musician and music lover I'm always looking for new ways and sounds to express myself, and just a few weeks ago I became interested on the cajon sounds in particular. Me being me I was not about to go to a music shop and buy one, nooo!, Instead I went the diy way and this is the result. You can find the link to my drawing with the cajon measures at the end of this instructable. I hope you like it!

Materials used:

1/4 sheet of furniture grade pine plywood, 15mm thick

1/4 sheet of furniture grade pine plywood, 5mm thick

4 pieces of oak for the corners

1 length of walnut veneer for the front and back tapas

Yellow glue

41 1" drywall screws

4 rubber feet

Minwax fast drying poly satin

Tools:

Tablesaw, router table, drill press, cordless screwdrivers

Before cutting anything I made a plan on Illustrator, always do that with all my proyects. I had all the wood from previous proyects laying around so I just picked up what I had at hand, in this case some plywood and oak, and some walnut venner. Went to the table saw and in a few minutes the wood was ready.

After checking all the 4 pieces where the same length, I did one 3/8" x 3/8" dado on each corner, with a straight bit on the router. That's where the side panels fit.

The router table was setup to leave a 3/8" rabbet on the the top and bottom sides of the panels.

It was time to make a dry fit, it worked almost perfect, just had to sand a bit here and there but otherwise it worked as planned.

Then I made the cuts on the 5mm plywood to get the front and back tapas, as my tablesaw and sled are small, I had to get a bit creative to make the long cuts. The cuts were made a bit larger than the final size, You'll see why later.

I took the veneer, looked for the best pattern and measured it a bit larger than the tapas so it would overhang some, placed some masking tape to protect the edges from breaking and used sissors to make the cut.

"Can't never have enough clamps" they say, and it was almost true this time!

After spreading yellow glue into the tapa, I placed the venner taking care of the alignment and carefully sandwiched the tapa/venner between some pieces of plywood, then went to do something else while the glue dried.

While waiting for the tapas to dry, I went to round the sides of the cajon with a roundover bit at the router table, made several small passes turning the cajon around to match the curves on both sides.

After the tapas dried I proceeded to glue the cajon, went first with the bottom panel + the corners, then the side panels, then the top panel + corners, the photo shows the last step, just waiting for the glue to dry again.

Update: added a drawing to show you where to apply the glue on this type of joints.

As the back tapa was too big to fit on my drill press I had to get creative again. I found a good piece of 5mm plywood that would fit on the drill press and made a pattern so I could make the sound hole at the router table.

After the hole was ready, I took the pattern and glued it on the inside of the back tapa, to reinforce the hole as it is used to carry the cajon... one stone, two birds :)

After carefully measuring the spacing and location of the screws to hold the tapas in place, the whole drill/countersink/screw dance started, 41 screws and one battery recharge later, it was done!

The overhang on the tapas was left so I could route them to the shape of the cajon with the pattern bit on the router table getting a better fit.

Next, the rubber feet were screwed on the bottom. Just marked the proper placement, drilled a pilot hole and that's it, fast job. Then into the varnishing.

I went with minwax fast dry poly satin applied with a piece of foam in thin layers, I prefer the look and feel of this, instead of thick and shiny.

And this is it! As I had some stickers with my monogram from another proyects I added one to the cajon as a finishing touch. Later on I will add strings or a snare wire, haven't decided yet which sound I like to go with, but it sounds pretty good as it is.

Here is the link to download my drawing if you are interested, if you build a cajon, let me know ;)

AS cajon.pdf

Thanks for reading, and I hope you liked the instructable ;).

So, for the time being I'm testing the cajon with a snare wire, it sounds good , maybe too prominent and there are some harmonics when tapping it so I may have to tweak the placement of the snare wire a bit to find a sweet spot, mabe add some sort of muffler.

Btw. thanks to everyone reading and adding this instructable as a favorite! I have a new one to publish soon ;)