Hey Mitch, so your thinking maple veneer on the clubbies now? If you do that I hope you stain them, I get mad when people paint new wood,lol!But, I do it all the time. All of my painted cabinets are made from hard maple, it takes paint very well!
I hear ya loud and clear - if I can get maple with no horizontal seams, I will try to match the 22" Ludwig bass drum I have, since the idea is to have jazz and rock sizes [minus 9X13"], interchangeable/mix-and-match, to suit the occasion [stage size].
Tommy, your walnut thermogloss kit that you recently got really inspired me. In fact I found your thread on it and stole one of the pictures.John, you are right, Tommy's stain match looks excellent! And it is hard to match colors. I did a red match myself a while ago for a guy using product right off my shelf. Here is a pic of the result.
Thanks John and Jeff. Jeff, no worries on the pic, sounds like you dig that finish as much as I do. Can`t wait to see your project when they are done. Keep us posted. Tommy
Well, thanks to the holiday I had time to do something fun in the shop. I really need to get this project finished, I need money!
I have worked on edges before but have never took time to true and square the shell edges. So I made up a quick sanding table and went to town. These shells really need it, see pic of 13" tom on table saw and you will see the gap under the edge. The sanding table did a good job making the shell flat and square. Another thing I did was I sanded down the "hump" that Ludwig is famous for at the seem.
Now I am running the edges over the 45 degree router bit to clean them up. I am removing wood until there is about an 1/8" of flat surface left. One problem I see is the shell plys are not uniform thickness, in some places I have the 1/8" in others I have 1/4" of flat surface remaining. Not sure what to do about it. The final cut will be a 1/8" round over bit on the exterior, then a light touch up by hand. Pretty much trial and error and learning as I go, having fun doing it.
The one edge looks great, nice work! Kinda unbelievable, the lumps and warts on Luddy shells eh? I thought I'd trued my Club Date FT bottom, but the head went on like a see-saw lol. Back to the sanding table. OTOH amazingly it doesn't seem to make them sound bad! Still worth doing the edges as it can't but help, especially if you're doing a kit for sale.
On that topic, I wouldn't worry about the varying thicknesses, but I'm a hack, and you're selling these. So maybe someone can chime in on how to address that....? Hand-sand the thicker areas from the inside?
Good to see you back at this project. I'm just awaiting BD rods and claws from ee_curtis [sent Monday] before I post again in "60s Clubdates".
Mitch
Thanks Mitch. Ya that lump or hump what ever you want to call it looked to be a problem when routing the outside edge. So I just sorta ground away at the outer mahogany ply and some of the poplar ply to make it smooth and also get rid of the step down where the mahogany ply ended. Now the shell looks funny but it is really nice and smooth, and when I apply the new veneer, I will butt joint it so there will still be no overlap.
I did the edges on my Rogers XP8's and they are by far the best sounding drums I have. I did do the edges on my Ludwig Zebra kit but I did not true the edges on a sanding table first. After using the drum dial on those drums it is easy to tell that there are low spots that should have been trued up. SO from now on, I will do it right.
I might go back and redo the Liudwigs, I want to get good at this.
Jeff - You're doing great with the edges! It's near to impossible sometimes because of the lay-up, but if you can keep the bearing edge itself centered on a hardwood ply, you're in business. Cool project.
John
Jeff - You're doing great with the edges! It's near to impossible sometimes because of the lay-up, but if you can keep the bearing edge itself centered on a hardwood ply, you're in business. Cool project.John
I dont know how I could center the edge on a hardwood ply, the outer ply is mahogany and very thin, the center ply is poplar and that is where it will end up. So what should I do?
Also, I filled in the second hole's on the 12" tom because I want to mount large classic lugs on it. It came with the small lugs. I used a tapering bit to size the holes just right, then glued in tapered maple plugs from the inside, just pushed them in until they were flush so I had light sanding to do on the inside.
Here is a shot of the inside and outside of the plugs.
Here are two pics of the really bad edge. Its hard to see but this is the best pic I could get. The edge goes from about 1/16" wide to 1/4" wide in this area. My Zebra drums were just as bad, really crappy edges. These drums would be worthless without the tune up I am performing. Even if I do this wrong it will be an improvement.
My next concern will be how to finish the insides of the shells. I really wanted to get them back to natural maple finish but that black paint is in the grain and wont come out. So I am thinking of white paint. But do I bring the whit paint all the way to the bearing edge or stop it just under the re-rings, then finish the rings in clear.
The outside will be birch veneer for sure but I need to confirm a stain or dye color.
As always very nice work Jeff. I see what you mean about the edges. Given this is the seam of the shell was it a common thing to see on Ludwigs?
