CatBat

Here is the instrument that Max and I made. It is made from a Bentley car bonnet (which we obtained from a car scrap yard - we got permission!), some dud guitar strings (that a local guitar shop generously gave to us for nothing), a plank of wood (found), some nails and screws (already in shop), and 2 metal poles (also in shop).
The shape of the bonnet provides a nice chamber for the sound. We drilled holes in the bonnet at one end, and affixed the plank of wood at the other, making a system which allowed the strings to be pulled through the holes and around the 2 metal poles. We drilled holes through the screws (a difficult task!) and threaded the strings through these, so that when we screwed them into the wood the strings would tighten with them, thus giving us a method to tune them.
Unfortunately the wood had cracks and when we tightened one, others would loosen. It definately was not an exact science.
We realised a face shape in the design of the bonnet and proceeded to paint these, hence where the name came from....
To play the instrument, we decided that hitting it with sticks seemed to create the best sound, although plucking also works, and we want to experiment with bowing.

We were granted special permission from our head of year to leave the catbat in the staff room over summer. Our plan is to work on it to get it properly working next year. We shall see...