After a period of silence we are back with yet another set of homemade musical instruments, which were fun to make and are even more fun to play with. During one of our summer evening strolls we were inspired by the Peruvian musicians who perform on street corners and sell their handmade musical percussion instruments, so we tried to make our own version of the spin drums we saw on their stall. The result is far from the beautiful handcrafted pieces the Peruvians make, but our drums actually work and that is what counts.

To make the spin drums we used two wooden round sticks, two round little boxes (either thick cardboard or bolster wood), some string and 4 beads.

1. Remove the lid from the boxes and insert the wooden stick on the side of the open box

2. Feed the string inside the beads making 4 separate strings. Don’t worry about the length to start with; better to keep it long so that you can adjust the size at the end.

3. Attach two strings in the inside of the box with glue and close the box with its own lid.

4. Adjust the length of the string and decorate with pens or paint.

5. Spin the stick and the beads attached to the string will create percussion sound on the base of the drums.