After removing all the hardware the next step was to strip the wrap. I don't know what glue they used during this time frame but it was STRONG. It was a bear to get this wrap off. I very carefully used a heat gun to soften the glue then pulled off the wrap. It took a long time and was a giant pain.

I didn't take many pictures along the way while taking the wrap off.

I had to be careful to not tear up the mahogany outer ply along the way. There were some spots I had to go back and patch up after the wrap was off. This is basically what the shells looked like after the wrap was stripped and the spots filled.

After the wrap was off I needed to start filling holes in the shells. You can see in the original pics of the drums someone had mounted goofy bass drum mounts to the 16 in floor tom. Those had to come off and be filled.

The concert toms all came with small lugs so all of those holes needed to be filled. The tom mounts for the concert toms also were filled. Even the 12 in tom tom needed to have its holes filled even though it eventually got small lugs. The holes are in a different spot on concert toms.

This might make some of you uncomfortable but I also filled the bass drum mount. I wanted a virgin bass drum since I never use the bass drum mount. All the holes were filled with solid maple with a few exceptions. I contemplated putting modern spurs on the bass drum but felt like that would go little too far beyond the generally vintage theme of the kit.

This is a shot of the 12 in tom after the granitone had been removed and the new holes were drilled. You can see the maple plugs pretty clearly.

After all the holes were plugged I stripped the interiors. I used the Citris Orange stripper. It worked pretty well. After the granitone was removed there was still a fair bit of sanding required, especially on the 16 in floor tom. It was like the granitone stained the wood. Luckily all of the drums had very nice clear maple under the granitone paint.

I picked up a couple other drums along the way. I got an orphan 13 in tom that was made in 1971 and a Pioneer snare that was a mid 70's 3 ply. The 13 in had a clear interior (yay - no stripping required) and the snare had granitone.

Here is a picture of the snare during the stripping of the interior.

Now that the interiors were stripped and cleaned up it was time to clean up the bearing edges. I know this will raise some eyebrows. As I said earlier, this kit was basically "vintage insignificant" because of the rough condition and what it was (partial Octa Plus concert toms).

I figured at this point I was so far into this project that I wanted to make it as "right" as I could make it since the goal is to take it out and play it.

The bearing edges were ROUGH to say the least. I used my flat leveling table and put a flashlight down in the middle of the drum and turned the drum to see how the edges were. Even the edges that were basically untouched were unbelievable. I'm sure they didn't leave the factory that way.

Anyway, the edges were all trued up on a leveling table using 80 grit sheets of paper. After all the edges were now flat it was time to recut the profile. A 45 degree router bit makes quick work of that.

Here is the 13 in tom after the edges were cut before any final clean up of the edge was done.

Now that the edges are done all the new holes were drilled. I used a handy drum layout mat from drummaker.com. It was a pdf they sent out as a gift one year. I took it to Office Depot and had them print and laminate it for about $10. Well worth it.

Here are a few pics of the layout and holes being drilled.

Now that the holes are done I cleared the inside of the shells. I used spray clear lacquer. I didn't get a super shiny finish but at least they were all clear maple and looked pretty uniform.

Here are the shells after the fresh lacquer.

I cleaned all the hardware parts using some of the ideas shared on this forum. I tried 2 ways to clean stuff - 1. soak the parts in dish soap & water and 2. soak the parts in vinegar.

In the end I found soaking the parts in white vinegar to work the best. It was amazing how nice these old parts cleaned up. The tension rods looked brand new.

Here is the pile of cleaned parts.

The next big step is to wrap the drums. I decided to go with silver sparkle. It is readily available and I think looks great on vintage drums and modern drums. Never seems to go out of style.

I used the 3M 30-NF Green adhesive. I read many many posts saying that the 3M stuff is the way to go. After my experience I have to concur. This stuff is awesome. I had great results.

I bought a rubber laminate roller to help the process. Made a huge difference. Here is the wrapping in progress.

The drums are wrapped and its time to start installing hardware. After the hardware is installed I need to clean up any edges where the wrap was tall enough to interfere with the bearing edge.

I tried a couple of approaches. One approach was to take a razor knife and hold it on the table about an 1/8 of the surface and spin the drum around it to clean up the wrap. Sounds straight forward but turned out to be a pain.

The best approach was to use the router with a round over bit with a bearing on the end of it. You have to VERY carefully set the height of the bit but once it is set you can clean up the wrap edges in no time. Wish I would have done it this way first.

Here are the freshly wrapped shells.