The more projects I work on, the more success I have doing things that would be considered "Crazy".
Soap Box
As musicians, most of us are in the box thinkers... we clean our cymbals with the BRAND cymbal cleaner (NONE OF IT WORKS WORTH CRAP!)... we end up replacing and throwing out things that could have been fixed...
I'm always looking for better ways to do things.. clean things, restore things. So this is just a note to encourage the rest of you to think outside the box.
When repairing wood.. ask yourself.. what industries would have the best, most demanding, and most durable wood repair products??.... hmm.. think hard..... what else is made of wood that has a CRITICAL need for reliability? give up? Boats. Yep. The boating biz has wood repair products that can fix cracks, and repair stuff that most of us would say "hell with it".....
How about hardware? Hmm? Hardware..... Chrome....... CARS! Oh yeah.. the best chrome cleaners are car products for sure. Removing rust, and cleaning up the chrome is worth a trip to a good auto store.
Ever have your drums vibrate apart? or stuff coming loose? Yeah.. that used to happen to me too... I had a pedal vibrate apart during a gig.. How do you fix that? Ask a machinist! Thread locker! Yeah.. the Loctite stuff. The blue kind... It's removable with hand tools, but stuff sure doesn't come apart anymore.
Cymbal cleaning.. here's a really fun one. Once upon a time, on another drum forum, I spend the better half of the summer experimenting with cleaning an old Sabian that looked like ass. by the end of the summer, I had the shiniest cymbal on earth. Sold it on Ebay for more than I paid! LOL.
My secret for that? Flitz... it's a generic metal cleaner.. NO.. it didn't make the cymbal sound bad...
Think outside the music catalog, and your restore projects will go much better.
The Greats innovate, most of us imitate. The smartest ones do both.
You can quote me on that one.
Vex
