A few days ago, I had the urge to break the routine of my recent unemployment laziness and build something. After a little bit of thought, With nothing specific in mind, I decided that I wanted to build some type of musical instrument, with the goal of building it entirely from trash I find laying around the neighborhoods of Atlanta. I have no income right now, so I set my budget at $0 for this project, no exceptions.

I hopped on my bike, and began scavenging. I found some old clay pots, a broken sink, and several other things that seemed promising, but I just couldn’t visualize a finished project with them. Eventually I came across a discarded piece of wood, perhaps from a porch, or mailbox. One end of it was already cut into a wavy shape, and I immediately thought, “lap steel!”. I grabbed the long piece of wood, and shoved it in my bag, then sat down at a bench and sketched out the idea.

With a giant block of wood slapping me in the head, I rode home and began searching for something to construct the nut, bridge, and tuners out of. I experimented with a couple pieces of ceramic from the broken sink and some broken beer bottle necks, but neither worked too well. Eventually, I settled on a long piece of aluminum that came from a broken screen window (thanks to some guy trying to evade the police pursuing him through our backyard). I cut the aluminum into two even pieces and screwed them to the board. Next, I drilled holes for the strings to pass through the body (secured in the back).

The next step proved to be the most difficult: the tuners. I originally planned on carving out tuning pegs, similar to those on a violin/cello. I found a nice, dried-out hardwood stick and set to widdlin’ the evening away. I carved out 6 nicely shaped pegs, drilled a 1/16″ hole in each (to pass the string through), and drilled 6 holes in the instrument. At first, the pegs fit firmly, and I had high hopes. However, through multiple attempts and adjustments, I found that the tension of the strings was simply too great. I tried some bow rosin in the holes; I tried putting the pegs on the underside of the instrument in hopes that the tension would pull the pegs deeper, tightening them. None of this even pretended to work. Stumped, I called it a night.

The next day, I awoke with visions of a billion complex tuning contraptions. I tried a couple of them, but all failed. As I brainstormed possible solutions, I could just see my dad repeating his usual philosophy for these situations: Keep it Simple, Stupid (KISS). I walked over to an old IKEA desk that my roommate threw away the day before, removed 6 of the little Swedish screw things, drilled a 1/16″ hole through each of them, and screwed them into the board. Worked perfectly.

Now, all that was left was the pickup, and strings. I originally planned on constructing a pickup from scratch, but that would’ve broken my $0 budget, so I (with the help of Anthony C.) just cut out a notch to recess an acoustic guitar pickup I had laying around. While stringing the instrument, the height of the tuning pegs was causing some issues, so a stick was added above the nut to lower the strings (props to Anthony for this too). With stick in place, strings were added, stretched, and tuned up to Open G. With the exceptions of a few aesthetic details, my new lap steel is complete!

I need to add fret markers, and would like to stain (or at least clean) the wood, but it is definitely a joy to play as-is. The thickness of the old wood adds a nice, deep resonance, and the sustain is pretty impressive considering the hollow-aluminum nut and bridge.

I achieved my goal of not spending a dime, and had a good time in the process. Now I just need to learn to play it! Here are photos/video of the (mostly) final product so you can hear how she sounds.

Let me know what you think!

Homemade Lap Steel – Video 1

Homemade Lap Steel – Audio Sample