Almost forgot, I came up with a pretty good method for fixing some of the delamination on the bass durm. Maybe this has been done before, but I haven't seen it. I used a syringe and needle to go under the ply that was lifting and inject wood glue. Then clamped it down and let dry. This way you don't have to do any more damage by lifting the ply to get the glue under it.

I suppose most people might not have access to syringes, but if you also work in health care, this is the way to go.

Does anyone know the screw size for these drums? They don't seem to have them at lowes or home depot. M5-8 and 12-24 seem to be the closest, but you can't really buy those in bulk (at all, for 12-24). Anyway, those are probably the wrong size. Any tips on size/source?

Lots of progress today. I sprayed 3 coats of gray, then added the glitter stripes. This paint sprayer was a great investment-- way easier and better result than brushes. Hopefully I can spray some clearcoat tonight and let them dry for a few days.

I also cleaned up the hardware. I'm surprised how good it came out. I soaked them in a bucket of water/dish soap with some goo gone added in. Not sure I needed the goo gone, but it worked. But I had to wash everything again to get the oily goo gone off. Tomorrow I will put a coat of polish on.

Done with glitter. This process worked well, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you want glitter everywhere. Next time I'll just buy some bass drum hoop inlay wrap and use that. Next step is clear coat, then reassembly.

Have you had any success with finding correct size screws? If so please let me know as I asked the same question a year ago and I still haven't found any (had to clean up old ones best as I could).

Thanks, Gary

I like that! Good job!

Yeah, that glitter stripe looks like it would be a pain.

....hehehehe....it is very messy. I place a sheet of visqueen on the floor and recycle when glittering. It takes care of most of the mess, but not all of it.

Use lacquer, not poly. Poly gives a plastic sound to thin shells.

I put down a tarp and recycled the glitter, but it still got everywhere in the garage. Also, I kept getting little bugs in the glitter.

I had to get a water based clear coat to go over the water based paint, so I was limited in my options. I got polyacrylic, hopefully that will work.

I still have to paint the bass drum hoops and assemble the rest of the kit, but here is the rack tom all finished. As an added bonus, it now sounds like a real drum!

They're done!!! That was a LOT of work-- it seemed like possibly more than this kit was worth during the process. But seeing (and hearing) the finished product, it was totally worth it. Plus, I learned a lot (especially how not to do a few things). They actually sound great. This may be vintage drum blasphemy, but the rack tom fit in great with my WFL kit. Obviously they don't sound as good as vintage American drums, but I'd say they sound 80% as good with 25% of the price tag.

Here is an outline of what had to be done to this kit:

[LIST=1]

[*]Disassemble

[*]Remove non-original wierd black wrap

[*]Strip paint/glue from shells

[*]Sand

[*]Rework bearing edges

[*]Plug assorted unnecessary holes

[*]2 coats of primer

[*]4 coats of paint (sanding between)

[*]4-5 coats of glitter (not fun or recommended)

[*]4 coats of polyacrylic (sanding between)

[*]Polish with paste wax

[*]Clean/polish hardware

[*]Repaint bass drum hoops

[*]Paint resonant bass drum head

[*]Reassemble

[/LIST]

It seems like less work written down, but I spent a pretty large portion of the last two weeks of my free time on it.