Cubism
This is a 3D printer:
It’s frickin’ awesome. It builds up layers of polymer into an honest-to-god pokable structure. And I want to use it to make a musical instrument.
I thought of this after yesterday’s daydreaming-about-metalworking post, realizing that I probably am not likely to a) get a metalworking shop into our rental apartment without some serious landlord hassles; or b) acquire the necessary expertise to squish a tuba into a cube (A CUBA! Hell yes!) without squishing its tubes totally shut. I’d probably just kinda whack a bit of copper pipe with a hammer and then get all mopey when it doesn’t even let any air through, let alone make noise.
However, G. already has mad autocad and 3d printing skillz (architects have ALL the fun) which combined with my slightly less useful — but more geeky — experimental physics, could totally result in the realization of all my Platonic-solid instrument dreams. Or at least a really, really weird looking kazoo.
Now there is just the tiny problem of, errr, getting our hands on a 3D printer.