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15" snare to floor tom project

Posts: 375 Threads: 36

I am almost finished with this project of converting a 15 inch diameter by 12 inch deep Ludwig & Ludwig marching snare drum. From the stamps on the inside of the drum I think it is from 1941. It is maple and not mahogany like my other old drums and maple does not take the stain as well but I think it came out okay.

It was a real pain to get all of the paint off of this drum. It had two coats, the top was blue and the under coat was white. I used an environmentally friendly paint remover and it was more like just moving the paint around. I finally got it all off with some sanding.

I used a few coats of red mahogany stain on the shell followed by 5 coats of clear poly. I finished the hoops with 4 coats of clear poly. The hoops were in pretty rough shape and the poly has helped that.

I am attaching a few more posts so I can get all of the pictures up of the project. I am waiting for my clear ambassador head for the resonant side. I have a Fyberskin Ambassador head for the batter side.

For the floor tom mounts, I found some Leedy & Ludwig mounts on eBay some time ago and I had some extra floor tom legs laying around.

The next project to complete my 3 piece set is a 13 inch diameter by 9 inch deep rack tom. I found it on eBay and it is from 1965 so not as old as my other drums and it has a very thin and somewhat damaged mahogany veneer that I hope to be able to repair. I'll be asking for some advice on that soon in a new thread. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy the photos.

Posted on 5 years ago
#1
Posts: 375 Threads: 36

Here are the next five photos

Posted on 5 years ago
#2
Posts: 375 Threads: 36

And the next five photos

Posted on 5 years ago
#3
Posts: 375 Threads: 36

And five more

Posted on 5 years ago
#4
Posts: 375 Threads: 36

Here are five more. I also cleaned the hardware with CLR and polished them up. A lot of the chrome had come off but they look okay.

Posted on 5 years ago
#5
Posts: 375 Threads: 36

Here are five more. I put the old heads back on because I wanted to see how it looked assembled. I should get the last head on Tuesday.

Posted on 5 years ago
#6
Posts: 375 Threads: 36

Here are the last five photos. I will update later this week when I get the resonant head. 15 inch heads are not that common and I was lucky to find both pretty quickly.

Posted on 5 years ago
#7
Posts: 6363 Threads: 223

Your hard work is paying off! Your conversion looks great!

-Mark

Posted on 5 years ago
#8
Posts: 1344 Threads: 172

Very cool! Here's my own 12 X 15 Leedy. This was never a snare as there are no extra holes for a strainer. It might have been a tenor drum. Sounds great. I have a Pearl Optimount on this.

Posted on 5 years ago
#9
Posts: 6432 Threads: 290

Nice work on the drum! Looks like the paint came off very nice and you had a clean shell to work with. Maple does not take stain very well a you mentioned. One thing to do is to pre-stain or condition the shell with a clear stain first, this makes the colored stain go on much more uniform. Im not sure if that will work with Minwax stain due to that product has some sealer mixed in it, at least it used to.

I think your stain came out nice regardless.


Thank you!
Jeff C

"Enjoy every sandwich" Warren Zevon
Posted on 5 years ago
#10
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