New Year Noisemaker: a Spun Box Whose Wooden Tongues Clack Over a Pinned Bobbin (Folkush, 1921)

"Upon rotating the casing 12 upon the shaft 11, the sounding boards 21 and 22 will be brought into violent engagement with the posts 19 and 20 causing loud sounds to be emitted."

Shape a handle from hardwood handle stock with a rasp, his handle 10, and glue a dowel shaft 11 into its end.

Cut three plywood disks 60 mm across (ours): two ends and the middle disk 18. Drill all three on the circle from the notebook and glue dowel posts 19 through all of them; then glue the shorter posts 20 between the middle disk and one end disk only, between the long ones. Drill the centre for the shaft and pin the bobbin to it, his pin 17.

Cut two plywood sides 14 with a round head 13 at one end, bored for the shaft. Join them with a closed end 24 and an open frame so the bobbin turns freely between the heads. Glue a cross rib 23 inside the closed end. Cut a slot 28 in each side for the slider.

Cut two thin hardwood strips (his sounding boards 21 and 22) long enough to reach from the rib to just inside the circle of posts, and screw their ends to the rib, side by side, one opposite each half of the bobbin.

Make a small wooden slider 26 that surrounds both boards, with a length of threaded rod through it whose ends pass out through the slots; put a wing nut on each end (his set nuts 29). Put the casing on the shaft over the bobbin and close the other side with a plywood plate 25, making a resonant box.

Hold the handle and swing the box round the shaft: the boards snap over the posts. Slide the slider toward the bobbin for a higher, sharper sound, away for a deeper one, and lock it with the wing nuts.

**Martin Folkush** of Milwaukee, US 1,374,644, dated 12 April 1921, filed 10 April 1920. He claimed "a noise maker comprising a shaft, a casing journaled thereon, a frame having spaced end supported posts", "one half of said frame being provided with double the number of posts that the other half has", and the pitch-adjusting slider. He names no materials and gives no sizes: the wood, all sizes, wing nuts and threaded rod are ours.