Well some progress today on the home made clamshell strainer. My son gave me a sweet piece of hard rock maple and fashioned a strainer body. Perfect for the body and yes quite rock hard too LOL. As shown earlier I made the bracket body from a electrical outlet cover plate. It's almost the same gauge steel as the original. A vise, sawsall, bench grinder and wire wheel and the bracket it roughed out. My test template was from sheet aluminum and the actual piece came out pretty good. The steel bracket body will be covered with a piece of scrap WMP like the original rolling bomber brackets were. The wood body will be stained or maybe tung oil. Not sure. I still need to order the throw handle and bolt, nuts, spring, shell nut before I can finish up. I'm hoping Mr Petty has some of these on hand and I can get them soon. If not I'll hit the hardware store and see what I can find. We'll see. Once I have the strainer figured out and needed parts I'll drill the bracket and wood body. And use a dremel to cut in the notches for the throw handle. Then I'll final shape and sand the wood body and file the steel bracket edges smooth and put the WMP on it. Hopefully it'll look good but more important function as designed.

The bass and floor tom are finished. Waiting on a tom mount and I'm looking at the creme pearl wrap @ Drum Foundry to wrap the 13" tom.

I need to thank Lynn S and Jeff C for the pics and advice on the throw. I hope this thing works~!

Here's a few pics of where I am now.........More to come!!

Looking good Glenn. It looks like your having fun with the strainer, cant wait to see how this turns out. Keep the pics a comin!

Jeff C

Thanks Jeff. It's a little hokey looking but long as it works I'll be happy. Here's a couple pics of the snare with the Pearl strainer on it. I added a L bar where the snare strings normally tighten to it. This allowed me to use the correct size Puresound CS extended snares and get it sounding nice for the time being. Note the 2 small metal bars used to mount the Pearl strainer. Whoever did this was smart as it allowed NO extra holes in the shell thankfully. But the original CS throw end was long gone. The tension knob on the Pearl strainer now sets the snare height (with optional black hair tie to keep the throw from being moved off LOL) and the original tension side of the clamshell is in place to adjust snare tension. I can't use the Pearl throw handle to disengage the snares but at least I can use the extended snares. Makeshift at it's best but works as intended. DOH So I figure making a home made clamshell throw end for now will look and work better until I find the right parts. The drum came with short snares on it and sounded horrible. So choked and dead sounding and I had to do something temporary to fix it.

This is why I told you your SO lucky your drum had all the clamshell parts!! LOL........

Ya when I got mine I had no Idea what I had, the only clue that made me think it was a valuable drum was the b/g Chicago badge and the date stamp of 1959. My kit is almost done, working on the bass drum now. The 13 and 16 are done and I have them set up with the snare and my Ludwig BOP bass drum. My problem is I have over 800 invested in this Slingerland kit and will never get that back, so better just keep em and play em!

Jeff C

Yep I hear you on the investment part. I'm right there with ya!! Hey that's cool your almost done with yours!!! Can't wait to see them.

I ordered a piece of wrap for the 13" today. I went with the cream pearl from Drum Foundry. I sent them a message about it on FaceBook and they mailed a 4x5 sample piece. It came here in 3 days which I thought was excellent service. Not a dead nuts match but will look very nice none the less. I'm happy with it. I also ordered the clamshell strainer handle from Emory at Drumatix. Once I have that I can continue on the throw side I'm making for the snare. I've had no luck finding a original CS yet so this will do until that happens. Got a few other parts I needed (floor tom leg and diamond plate tom mount) and have those installed. I got the tom mount in a good spot I'm happy with. Since the bass came with a consolette on it I thought I might as well use it. Hopefully in the next month or so it'll be finished. Been a really fun project so far. Here's a pic of the cream pearl wrap......... color is a bit off in the pic, bad lighting here.

One thing I have learned about wrap is there is no way to match vintage wraps. The new wrap I just put on my Slingerlands is very nice good quality wrap but the problem is, its new. It looks brand new and kinda makes the drums look weird/fake in a way, definatly not a true vintage drum anymore. I can see why the value is cut in half on re-wraped drums.

Your wrap look very much like the one I choose. It will be beautiful, nice choice. Dont read me wrong about the new wrap, its nice and all but it so new it looks kinda fake or something. I especially like the vintage sparkles, I have a Apollo red sparkle kit waiting to be restored and it look so much nicer than the new red sparkle wrap. I like the way my Slingys turned out, just wish they had the orgional wrap on them.

Anyway, sorry for the huffing and puffing Glenn, again nice choice, it will look super great!

Jeff C

I agree Jeff. Nothing compares to the real thing as they say. Very hard to match something with almost 60-70 years of aging. The wrap is very nice but small chip pattern and not as yellow. So I understand completely how you feel. But overall I'm very happy with how they are turning out. I saved some old drums in the process and gave them a new life. As you did as well. Give your new wraps a few years and they'll start to age and mellow a bit. For me I just really love the sound these old drums have. Nothing quite like it. And it's really a blast to fix them up too.

Glenn, you are so right about the sound. Just tonight I rotated my 71 Supra, my 70,s Fibes and The 59 Gene Krupa. Guess which one blows the other two away?

Gotta be your 59 Krupa!! I only have a 70's COB Sound King to compare to. While each has it's own great unique sound the Radio King gets a big thumbs up here.

I got a email from Emory this evening and he shipped my strainer handle today. Hopefully when this hurricane mess is done with here I'll get that and the wrap to continue. All drums, amps, guitars and basses are moving to higher ground here!! We are on the edge of the coastal beach evacuation area so if it's bad enough we'll have to leave.