Important basics...
Source your wood first
Before you set out on a marimba making project you need to establish what wood you are going to use.
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Marimba keys need to be made from a well seasoned hard wood. You cannot use pine or spruce or other types of soft wood found at a building suppliers as they will quickly go out of tune. You can experiment with these, but don't plan on making something permanent from soft wood except the frames. The exception is cedar which I understand makes quite nice keys, but I have not tried this and anyway, it is as expensive as the hard woods you are likely to find.
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Ringing hard woods include sycamore and oak if you can find these locally available. Otherwise the preferred wood of choice for marimba makers is rosewood. However, as tropical hardwood forests are under attack all around the world, it may be on your conscience to avoid using African or Honduran rosewood. Another option I'm told is is Paduak, another tropical hardwood - but I am not familiar with the sustainability of this wood either. Marine pine is supposed to be another option, but here in Kazakhstan, to make my marimbas I was able to find some locally available hardwood called Karagatch.
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Karagatch is a type of elm that is found on the central Asian steppe. It is commonly available and I believe it is fairly abundant. It is not, however, a large tree and so it is difficult to find large pieces. However, I was able to find 50cm x 5 cm x 5 cm bars that were destined to be turned into stair bannister rails. I found these at a stairmakers workshop and the bars had been well seasoned, were dry and produced a high metallic sounding 'tink' when tapped with end of my finger nail.
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Later I did some research on elm and discovered it has an internal velocity for sound waves of around 3800m/s which is not far off the 4200m/s that is quoted for rosewood. I was happy that I had sourced wood for my keys, but obviously I was limited to keys that were only 50cm long and 5 cm wide.
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It was not hard to find a sawmill prepared to cut the bars up the centre to turn each bar into potentially two keys; but finding hard wood on a grander scale in my local town of Shymkent has proved impossible so far. If I want to build a baritone or bass I will need to import wood from Russia or China...but that is another project and another story.
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Decide on your tools
You are going to need some essential tools to complete this project. Personally I think there are four basic power tools that you will need. A circular saw is useful is you are not handy with a hand saw. Personally I cannot cut straight, so it was really helpful for me. The second thing you will need is a good quality router. My first router, made in China, fell apart nearly gashing my leg in the process, but the Bosch router I invested in afterwards has proved to be well worth the money. Having a workbench on which to mount the circular saw and the router so it can be used in an inverted position is also highly recommended. Indeed, I don't know how else you cut out keys with a router otherwise!
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You will need a drill. My drill doubled up as a sander for some jobs, but in truth a dedicated belt sander would have been a really helpful addition to my workshop. In the end I did without the sander as I became fairly adept with the router, with a file and a bit of sand paper to finish off the fine tuning.