I found this skateboard that someone had thrown away. You could tell from the damage that it had not been moved in quite some time. Instead of letting it rot away, I took it home, cleaned it up a bit, and turned it into this Japanese Koto.
Kotos typically have 21 strings, but there’s not enough room for that many strings on a longboard, so I settled for the highest pitched 10. These 10 strings add so much tension that I had to find some heavy duty brackets to keep the bar holding them down straight. Each string has its own bone bridge that I hand-shaped out of dog chew bones, using a belt sander. The tuning is done via zither pins, and the eye loops directing the strings to the pins are from the 1890’s piano I salvaged (I use these eye loops in quite a few projects documented on this website).
I really like how this one came out. It is very relaxing to play. Because of the tuning, you don’t have to have much music knowledge to be able to improvise a few songs.
The finished product Hand shaped bridges
