Some shots of the innerds. Nice edges and resorings. Spectacular shape.

This is a head popper. All of these shots are of the edge of the bass drum. That's a single drum here. I count three (maybe four) different types of wood within a single ply. There is a light colored wood, a medium toned wood, and a very dark toned wood. Wild stuff. Most likely the aftermath of a memorable staff party. Should make for some interesting acoustical variables.

Slingerland and Ludwig 3-ply drums were made from plywood that was manufactured by another company. When they made them into shells they (ludwig or slingerland) cut the plywood to size and steam bent them into drum shells. Looks like the middle ply was made from a few sections of veneer when it was manufactured. It's most likely all the same species of wood but since it was a middle ply, the manufacturer didn't bother to color match the pieces.

I believe both Slingerland and Ludwig cut and laid out each ply. Then they put them into the molds and added the glue. I don't recall any wood supplier shipping plywood to either company. The only steam bent shells were the single ply snares ... And some very very early drums. Nope, Slingerland holds 100% of the blame for this snafu. It's definitely different species of wood. Pretty wild stuff, for sure.

That is amazing looking!Bowing

I believe you are incorrect. About 10 years ago all of the slingerland shell bending equipment was sold of by Gretsch on ebay. They were big machines for bending the wood into shells. They had machines for the different sizes of shells.

Three ply shells were wrapped around the form, not placed in a mold. That didn't come until the 6 ply shells.

Also with the three ply shells, the wrap was glued to the unbent shell and then bent around the form. This is why the wrap goes all the way through the scarf joint. The scarf joint is cut before the shell is bent. If they were laid in individually as you say, there would not be a scarf joint, there would be staggered seams like a modern shell.

I also recall reading Bill Ludwig Jr talking about their plywood supplier back in the three ply days and not giving a lot of though of the composition.

William Connor discussing the Shelbyville operation ...

"The only variation was that he was using maple for the reinforcement hoops, and we were using oak. We found that we could easily get the oak locally and it was very workable. You could roll it, heat it, and make a beautiful hoop. I had to go all over the country to find poplar for the core material. The inner and outer plies were mahogany. I found a place in Louisville where I could get the mahogany veneer for the facings. The grain ran parallel to the axis of the drum on the core material. It was all put in a form that was heated. The form was in two halves so it would open up for shell removal. We'd clamp it together, put the mahogany in, put the core material in, the other layer of mahogany, a hoop at the bottom and a hoop at the top. Glue was brushed on the wood just before the wood was put in the mold. Then came the tube apparatus. The tube would be put inside and blown up and we'd heat the mold so it'd dry fairly quickly."

Slingerland was known to use burlap to reinforce the form mold strength.

Now, can we get back to my kit? That would be a very cool thing to do. I believe this clears up the historical accuracies that probably should have been discussed within a different thread.

Thanks, big guy. I'm very blessed that it fell into my hands. I'm loving the overall condition of it. Someone took very good care of it through the years. I would imagine it was one of those "don't touch the drums!" kind of situations. They don't even have the spidercracking that a lot of 70s Slingy natural finishes suffer from. Too cool.

Here's the latest. I'm fairly busy working on putting my new house in order ... so, I don't have an abundance of free time to devote. But, I am moving along at a nice slow pace. It's fun on a bun.

While I would love to take credit for putting this kit back into spectacular shape ... I can't. It really came to me in fairly nice condition. All I'm doing is cleaning it up, replacing a few parts, and skinning it.

At this point, I've cleaned the shells inside and out with Murphy's and then gone over them with Scott's. I've also cleaned and polished most of the hardware. It'll be another couple of days before the hardware is complete.

I'm going to put on Ludwig T-rods and claws. It's missing 10 of the Slingy ones and I've got a spectacular set of 20 Luddys, so why not. It's missing the screw mech for the bass mount. Not sure what I'm going to do here. I may seek one out. I'll go through my inventory and see if I have one. If not ... I may ask one of you to sell me one.