Repairing a Vintage Hohner Harmonica Case

My Grandfather bought a Hohner Chromonika while serving in World War II (ironically, a German brand). When I was a child I had my own little blues harp, and seeing that I had an interest in it, he gave me his harmonica, in a lovely finger-jointed wood box.

Being a child at the time, I was a bit rough on the whole kit, and the box ended up broken with a couple of the pieces lost. I took the time recently to fabricate new finger-jointed pieces, and attach a new pair of hinges. Here's how the build went:

P1010023

The Harmonica Case and the blank I cut from scrap stock.

P1010026

I used the dremel to cut out the finger joints, after scrolling the existing joints on the box. Some adjustments were necessary to get a tight fit.

P1010034

The joints were attached with wood glue, and clamped for drying.

P1010042

I jacked these hinges off a box that I hardly use. They're pretty weathered, and a decent fit.

P1010045

P1010051

I'm happy with the results, and glad I was able to try this detail work with the dremel.

Sneak Peak of "Bounce Announce"

This is video taken by Jason Stephens at ITP this evening. The Bounce Announce project has legs, and it's taking it's first steps toward ping-pong musical madness. Enjoy this clip.

Workshop Tour



After a feverish build session on the "Bounce Announce" project, I trashed the workshop and re-organized in the aftermath. This is probably the cleanest it's going to get for months, so I decided to document it.

The "Bounce Announce" instrument will be completed by Sunday, at which time I will post video of it in action. If you'd like to see it (and lots of other awesome projects) live, make sure to go to the ITP Winter Show.

"Bounce Announce" Visualization Element

I've decided to take the Bounce Announce project and add visualization to it utilizing piezo sensors and processing. Every instrument will have a piezo trigger attached to it, that will be processed by Arduino and fed to a Processing visualization sketch.

On a projected backdrop, the effect should appear to be differently colored expanding concentric circles that originate from each impact point.

bounce announce visualization