Huge Gourd - need suggestions!

[Teresa Wiggins]

I just received this huge gourd. What could I make with it besides the obvious drum? It measures 16 3.4" across. (42.5 cm)

It's dried and ready for carving or pyrography. But I'm thinking I want to make an instrument after decorating it. It does have a crack, see the front of the bottom piece, but I think I can fill that with wood filler.

[Jim McConkey]

With a through-neck, you can easily make a gourd banjo, mandolin, kora, or any number of other instruments, with the bottom of the gourd replacing the sound box. If you hadn't cut it in half, you could have made a shakere, which is kind of a big rattle with a loose woven mesh with beads at the junctions surrounding the whole gourd. I was given a big gourd back in the fall, and it is just about completely dry now. Shakere might be its eventual use.

[Teresa Wiggins]

Oh, I didn't cut it in half, it came that way. I'll have to see what a kora is. What's a through-neck?

Is the smaller half good for anything?

[Jim McConkey]

Guitars generally have necks that attach at just one end of the box. In through-neck instruments, the neck goes all the way through the box and attaches to both sides, kind of like your dulcimer neck on the uke body.

A kora is a stringed instrument from Mali. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kora_(instrument)

Make an interesting bowl or even a drum out of the top.

[Teresa Wiggins]

That kora looks so complicated. But I love the way it sounds.