Breather Hole Eyelets - Page 1 - Vintage Drum Forum

You folks may have beat this topic to death in the past, but I am at the point in a restoration project where I need to re-attach some old Slingerland badges to re-wrapped shells.

The eyelets I got from Precision Drum have a flared configuration on the formed end which I am afraid will not produce a clean exterior look using any kind of tool I have seen available to attach these.

It's kind of hard to explain - but the original badge eyelets had a "rolled shoulder" that produced a very clean bead.

The eyelets that I see available these days are a plain flared cylinder that requires the use of some kind of compression tool.

If the eyelet is flared (like the bell of a trumpet) there is no way that hitting this with a hammer or screwing it down with a nut and bolt is going to produce an original "rolled bead" appearance.

Do any of you guys have any ideas for me?

Thanks.

Jamminsam sells a tool for installing eyelets, or its free when you order wrap from them.....works reasonably well. You can also fab up something similar from your local hardware store too. You will need a plastic grommet with a shoulder that will fit inside the metal grommet for the badge, a couple of flat washers, a countersunk type head bolt and a nut. The bolt must pass through the plastic grommet of course. The idea is to use the flared head of the bolt to spread out and flare the grommet on the inside of the shell. When the grommet is mostly flared, you stop, then unthread the nut and switch the bolt around the other way. With a flat washer on each side of the grommet at this point, you tighten the nut and the flat washer then flattens out the flare against the inside of the shell.

Check out their website, I think there is a how to use the tool page if this is too vague for you. Hard to explain without pics of actually doing it, but if you think about it, its quite a simple method.