Lugs overview

Here's an overview of the 64 lugs that are identical, original, complete and undamaged. Lucky me.

 
As you can see, it's a late version of the old champion lug, with small mallet logo, with threaded insert and spring, the same that those of the early phonic (with square badge). Very similar to a modern lug actually. And definitely bulletproof.

After removing grease gunk (the former owner loved spreading workshop grease all over, instead of focusing on the thread itself. Jeez.) and some polishing, I'm sure they'll look great.

Birkenholz Drum Boutique

Some explanation on the name I took for this page.

Birkenholz, Birch in German is my favorite wood. There are two birch trees in the yard at my folks, so I guess it comes from my childhood.

I thought that German word not only sounded good, but was easy to pronounce and remember since many people around the globe bear the last name "Birkenholz".

Drum speaks for itself.

Boutique is at the same time a word meaning "fine store" in French, my mother tongue, and an international English word going well with what I do my my drums.

Repairing a crack on the floortom

During the restoration process, I noticed the floortom shell had a crack on the outside, where two plies meet, running 2 plies deep. I decided to perform quite an invasive crack repair.

I worked similarly to the finishing plugs: route out a shape and glue a strip of wood.

It looks like the shell is slightly out of round, but it seems it has been crushed long ago (hence the crack...). We'll see.

Groove routed out

Strip of beechwood (cut to an angle to match woodgrain) before being glued. I'll post pictures of the sanded patch under the "sanding and filling" article.

Plugging unwanted holes

Since I decided to restyle the drumkit, I took the option of plugging unwanted openings: damper attachment, tom and bassdrum bracket.

The idea is to give it a cleaner look. I usually place my rack tom on a snare stand, so bracket was redundant.

In order to plug the holes properly, I followed a few steps:

1. Filling the existing holes with pieces of wood, whether it's plugs (cut with a plug cutter) or wood patches, carved to shape. I sometimes had to enlarge the existing holes to fit a standard plug, like I did with the damper mounts. It's OK if it's not very clean, it's only the first step of the process.

2. Hollowing out a shallow cut (using a forstner bit for holes or a router for shapes) that overlaps the filling plug, both sides of the shell. Then glue thin patches trying to match woodgrain. This has 2 advantages: give a cleaner joint (thanks to superficial routing) and a stronger bond (finishing plugs kind of seal the filling plug into the shell).
 

A very convenient one handed Makita wood trimmer, perfect for that kind of light woodworking. The copying ring follows the edge of the jig, that's 2 mm wider than the cut. I used hot melt glue on masking tape to fix the jig to the shell.

In this case I used a piece of thick gloss cardboard from a shoebox to cut the routing jig. Worked fine.

There you have it. A nice pill-shaped cut, ready to have finishing patches glued.

3. Sanding or routing off the finishing plugs flush with the shell.

Here a few 15mm finishing plugs, actually one long plug cut into slices

If you pick the right wood tone, plugging can become barely noticeable

Removing the wrap

After unscrewing all the hardware, the first operation was to remove the thick ugly yellowed white wrap. Fortunately, the wrap wasn't glued all around the shell, but only at some points. Getting rid of it was quite an easy job.

I tried several methods to remove dried glue: acetone, hairdryer and thumb or leather. It somehow worked, but thorough sanding will be absolutely necessary.

A SONOR late 70s Super Champion

This is the super champion kit I bought pretty cheap (200 euros = 220 USD). It is actually a hybrid mix consisting of a 24x14 9-ply beech bassdrum (super champion), a 16x16 6-ply beech floortom (champion), a 13x9 6-ply beech rack tom (champion) and a 14x10 9-ply beech rack tom (super champion). This was definitely a professional kit back then, built like a tank.

The fair price allows me to be quite creative about restoration and finish, so the idea is not an identical restoration, but more of a restyling.

On the other hand, the shell set had many shortcomings: mismatched tuning rods, damaged bearing edges, some heavy pitting on the chrome, unpaired hoops...

Damaged bearing edge

Mismatched hoops

This old "Mutti" (German for mom) will be turned into a 24/13/16 3-piece with a 14x8 snare drum. Given the condition, it will be no shelf queen, and I'm definitely planning to take her on stage or in the studio.