Hi all,
Here's the latest cleaning/restoration.
1934 5x14 Slingerland Black Enamel/Artgold DuAll Model
This drum had some bad mojo on it, here's the story. This drum was on eBay a few years ago, the sellers were a bit clueless on how to shop the drum or the drum's value so after a few calls to the resident experts in the field they put it on eBay. There was some interest back and forth, then the sellers pulled the auction and then one of our fellow collectors offered 7000.00 for the drum after the auction was over. I talked to the sellers and they said they turned down the 7000.00 offer because they had a "9000.00 offer from Japan". I called back after a few weeks and found out that they still had the drum so I inquired as to the "9000.00 offer from Japan" and they said that they were now going to keep the drum for their kids as it will be worth more money later on (read) there was no "9000.00 offer from Japan"...I think that they got greedy and blew it. So a few months ago I see this drum on eBay for a BIN of 4995.00...sold!
I love these Slingerland DuAlls, they are very rare, (very few were made, less than a year in production), they look cool, they are historic etc...but man what a royal pain in the ass to work on. These drums remind me of an ancient wooden ship that goes in for restoration; creaking wood, tweaked, malformed parts and just a whole lot of "oldness" to deal with. The Tone Flange (hub cap) requires a certain amount of wrestling in order for it to fit on the 75+ yr. old shell, the DuAll mechanism has a bunch of small parts that one needs to memorize (diagram) in order to remember the sequence of assembly and then when the drum is back together you hope everything works.
This drum is all original but still had a few issues. The black enamel shell was split open at the seam but my good friend Al Schneider (The Drum Doctor) was able to fix that right away and the black enamel needed only a basic cleaning, polishing and detailing. The Artgold hardware was in very good shape but was very dirty with a small amount of tarnishing so I did my normal cleaning and restoration on the hardware.
Enjoy.
Mike Curotto
