Back when I played drums for a living. You heard of that period...back in the stone age of the 1950's--1980's. The drum shells were either metal or WOOD. The wood was either a single ply or laminated plies of maybe 3 or 4 or five in number. Most American-made wooden drum shells had the grain running horizontally around the shell.The lesser quality wood shell drums (mostly Asian imports) had vertical grain of softer and lighter weight wood running from bearing edge to bearing edge. I don't know a single drummer from back in those unenlightened times who asked about or cared what species of wood went into the shells. Some might have wanted an exterior ply of unwrapped shells to be a specific wood....or at least be stained to look like a specific variety of wood.

Interesting because I just picked up a 1939 dated Leedy Reliance snare, 14x6.5, and it definitely is mahogany on the inside. I would assume that a late 40's would also be the same, but yours looks maple from the photos. I certainly cant tell plys from those shots.

I'll try to report on my Leedy soon, for comparison purposes.

-john

Not sure on that exact drum but most makes from that era tend to contain either maple or mahogany plies around a poplar core. Usually 3 plies were used. I can't see your pictures well enough on my phone but chances are it's a poplar core and one (or sometimes both) of the other two for the exterior plies. In '46 even Gretsch was using 3 ply shells. I imagine someone with more leedy centric knowledge can chime in with the right answer. I have a 39 Leedy that is one ply maple but I also have the same model from 1940 and by then they had switched to using plies.

I'd agree that back then no one really paid much attention to what woods were being used so drum companies were pretty free to use whatever worked best for them from a cost and woodworking standpoint. It seems that maple and mahogany particularly suited some of these requirements as did poplar.