I just finished doing some restoration work on a museum drum for a civil war exhibit. One of the things I had to do was to make reproduction ears for the drum I was working on. I was asked if they would be able to tell the new ears apart from the originals when they were done and so I told them that they would. Shortly after the ears were delivered I received a call from the gentleman responsible for overseeing all of the restorations for this particular museum and was told that he had a small complaint about my work. He told me that the museum curators weren't able to tell the difference between the new and old ears from several feet away. This may become my favorite complaint ever.
Below or the 6 ears I created for their civil war drum (an 1827 Eli Brown) and the original ear from the drum that is pictured in the middle. I was not able to find a leather tool that matched the star on the original ear so I had to use a small star stamp and then do the outlines around each star by hand.
