Cutting down a shell, the Japanese way.

A few words  about how I shortened this shell, working carefully and slowly, by hand.

First of all, I made a template using the existing mounting holes to draw the cutting line, the shell being cut a little wider that its final depth. I assumed the mounting holes were aligned, which is about right.

The final depth line was marked all around the shell using a cutter and a flexible ruler. After being completely refinished, I'll sand it down to that carved line.

I cut the shell down using a pull saw (aka Japanese saw), that has very fine teeth and that allows for a very accurate and fine cut.

Utility knife line on the left for final depth, saw cut on the right

There it is, piece of cake.

D517 BBC aka "The Rehearsal Room's Phonic Leftovers Pretty Deep Snare. Parts overview.

As a completion of the restoration works on the Champion, I had planned to turn the 14" 9-ply tom-tom into a snaredrum.

Here are most of the parts for this snaredrum build workaround.

• Shell is a 9 ply 10 mm super champion (very much like phonic) - from Marcus, Belgium
• Lugs come from a phonic plus bassdrum. Chrome is bubbly due to deep oxidation - from Friedrich, Drumhouse, Germany.
• Throw off was on a Force 2000 snaredrum. Well used and not so good looking, but made in Germany and similar to a phonic one. From Valery, Belgium.
• Tuning rods are what's left over after selecting the best matching rods for the tom-toms. From Marcus, Belgium and from Martin, Germany
• Heads are second hand REMO: Ambassador snare on reso side, Emperor X reverse dot on batter side. Reso from Valery, Belgium, batter from Clara, Belgium.
• Hoops are Tama's Power 10-hole. Yeah I know, not SONOR. Heavily pitted, from a late 90s model that I sold a couple of months ago, with new hoops. I had those lying around, so wth. I think I wrote "re-use and recycle" somewhere. Thus from my own private reserve.
• Snarewires are PURESOUND custom 24 strands. New stuff...

Code is D517 BBC

D is for snaredrum, phonic style
5 is for standard/deep size
1 is for wood shell
7 is for a 7 1/4 shell depth
BBC refers to the finish. Surprise.

Built follows.

My own private Finish Friday! Cornelia in her green dress.

Issue with warped shell and how to solve it.

As you might have read earlier on the article about fixing a crack on the floortom, it looks like the shell is quite out of round. Well, it really is, about 6 mm (1/4") on the resonant side and 3,5 mm on the batter side.

I'm not too concerned about how a slightly out of round shell might sound bad or not, but rather about the head not fitting evenly and properly.

Here's what I did to reshape it without damaging it any further.

The idea is to secure the shell in shape by using perfectly round plywood rings, attached using the lugs mounting holes. To make fitting easier and to avoid having too much effect on vibration, the ring won't touch the shell, except at the mounting holes, through small beech dowels.

 

It seems to work, the diameter looks more consistent (about 2 mm variation). I can live with that, even though I was expecting less. Maybe I should design a more accurate / fine tunable construction.

Turning a shiny piece of plywood pipe into a musical instrument.

Like the title of the post suggests it, this one's about truing and routing the bearing edges to their final shape.

While doing it, I really felt like I was finally working on a musical instrument. I don't know, looking at the edges getting nice, smooth and flat, and thinking about the head resting evenly made me feel like the whole restoring process was even more worth it.

Here's how the bearing edges looked like when I got the drums. They had been recut, since SONOR drums from that era had round bearing edges, but the job was poorly done.

I started off by checking the height of the shell using a template, based on the lugs drill holes. I actually took the smallest height and removed 3 mm both sides. After sanding, edges should be flat and parallel, assuming the drill holes are perfectly aligned. Which is the case. C'mon it's German engineering.

The idea is to sand off just enough material to be able to route fresh bearing edges.

Afterwards, I built a router / sanding table with birch plywood leftovers (from my uncle's carpentry company).

As you can see on the picture, I'm using a 24"x18" phonic plus shell as a reference for checking trueness. By the way, the shell will be part of a next project that I - of course -  haven't planned yet.

The white marks help me sanding flat until enough material is removed.

This is a - discarded - large piece of sandpaper from a wide belt sander. Very convenient.

The re-cutting steps

1. Existing bearing edge
2. Edge flattened on the sanding table, 2 1/2 plies wide
3. Outside round out to 1/4th of the 2nd ply
4. Inside 45° to 1/4th of the 2nd ply
5. Careful finishing by hand, leaving a little less than 1/2 ply of head contact.

Outer roundover, using a 1/4" radius bit.

Still a tiny bit to go to get to 1/4th of the second ply

The inside 45 was done with a chamfer bit, working with very small height increments (0.25 mm) to ensure the cut doesn't go too far.

Finishing by hand, with P150, P240 and then some polishing with scotch brite

Always very complicated to take a good picture of the bearing edge, but it gives you an idea how nice it is now.

Drum shells. Refinished. 1.437 square meter of gloss forest green beech marvel.

So here we are finally.

After more than 8 weeks of curing, the poly finish was ready to be sanded and buffed.

I started using P400 paper (siarexx fine), to remove all the brush marks, drips and dust inclusions.

I then flattened the surface a little bit further with a P500/600 superfine sanding sponge (siasponge flex). The sponge helps to achieve an even surface by spreading pressure and following the curve.

Now we're going over to wet standing, starting with P800 then P1200 and finally P2500 (siawat on foam). I actually used naphta as a lubricant, I wasn't confident enough about using water on wood, because I had issues when wetsanding shellac earlier.

I think it translates by "naphta" or "white gas"

The finish is now completely smooth, sanding scratches are at this point virtually invisible.

Then the surface is buffed to a high gloss finish with a cleaner (an intermediate rubbing compound) in several passes.

Sorry about the fingerprints here and there, I'll do a light polishing when I'm done with tung oil application and bearing edge reshaping.

Enjoy!

My neighbors' facades reflection

The inside of the shells had one coat of tung oil applied. After some cleaning with steelwool, they'll get a second light coat and some light satin buffing.

Interlude #2: Gasket Night.

Who would let the chunky metal lugs scratch the beautiful high gloss poly? Not me. And who wants that signaturish/finished look that some rubber gaskets will give you? We all do, don't we?

So I went looking for suitable rubber sheet to make gaskets. After trying to source free EPDM leftovers from a construction site - without success - I went to a store selling industrial rubber products. They carry all kinds of rubber products for many applications and sell it by 10 cm (4"). So I got this strip of 1mm thick neoprene rubber (20 cm x 120 cm) for a couple of euros.

Time to make a pile of gaskets. Sixty-eight. Forty-eight for this 3-piece. Plus twenty for some snare drum on the way. Mmh, late evening chain work. Here's how I worked:

1. Measuring and drawing the lug adding 1 mm offset.

Dimensions of a champion/phonic lug in millimeters, measured on a digital caliper. You're welcome

2. Printing lugs on label paper, then sticking on rubbersheet and cutting.

3 Making a punching template with cardboard, and fixing the gasket at the back with repositionable spray glue. Then punch the holes using my office hole punch.

4 Little detail: round off the corners using a file to get that "factory made" look.

I also cut 5 gaskets for the floor tom and bass drum feet brackets - which are identical on a champion. And 3 for the badges. But still a long way before mounting them. Oh well...