I have never had any musical talent -- none, that is until one day after I received a mild electrical shock while repairing an old radio. One minute I had no musical talent, then "ZAAAAP," suddenly I was overwhelmed with it!

Well, that's not exactly how it happened, but I did build a Stumph Fiddle (if you're not familiar with a stumph fiddle you can read about them here). The good news is that it doesn't take a lot of talent to have fun with one as you will see in the video in the last step.

Step 1: Materials Required

The material list to build a stumph fiddle is pretty relaxed. Basically you need a pole, and a bunch of noisemaking items to mount on it. I patterned my stumph fiddle after several I saw on the internet.

The one I built used the following:

- a strong adhesive
- a 1.25 inch wooden closet rod (about 5 feet long)
- two metal pie tins filled with nuts and bolts and riveted together
- some lightweight screen door springs
- an old metal sauce pan (with a bent handle)
- two bells
- a bicycle horn
- a wooden noisemaker percussion thing (bought at a toy store)
- several jingle type bells
- an iron plumbing reducer
- a hard rubber ball
- a few angle brackets
- misc. nuts, bolts, and wood screws
- stain and varnish

The tools used were:
- drill & bits
- scredriver
- paint brush

Step 2: Add Bounce to the Pole

The first thing I did was stain and varnish the pole.

Next, i added some bounce to the pole (you'll see why in the video in the last step). I glued the plumbing reducer to the end of the pole (using Gorilla glue), then glued the rubber ball to the reducer (using a silicon based adhesive) and reinforced the ball with a threaded stud that fastened the ball to the end of the wood pole.

Step 3: Assemble

The first thing I did was bolt the pie pans to the wood pole using two long machine screws and nuts (I did this before riveting the pie pans together).

Next, using angle brackets, I screwed the various noisemakers to the pole, leaving about 6 inches of pole at the top to give me a place to grab it. I mounted the cow bell upside down, and the "ringing bell" beneath it, using some rubber washers between them.

Everywhere I used a machine screw, I used a threadlocker to keep the vibration from loosening the mounts.

I also made a storage pocket from some scrap copper tubing (plugged at one end) to hold my drumstick (2nd photo). This is optional, but handy.

The final item was to stretch the screen door springs over the pie tins, and mount them using two eyebolts.

Step 4: Play!

The stumph fiddle is a percussion instrument, and is played by bouncing it up and down and striking the noisemakers (and the springs) with a drumstick (or dowell). As you can see in the following video, it is a fun instrument that doesn't take a lot of musical talent!