Can you provide pictures of the problem? Sometimes, it's a simple fix...sometimes it's not.

I am not a drum repairer!! I am not a craftsman!! I only offer this suggestion because I worked as a maintenance man at a school for a few years when I was in college. I watched our old woodshop guy repair delamentating or bubbling student work tables (not fine furniture) by splitting the bubbled veneer layer along the grain of the wood with a very fine xacto type razor knife and seperating it very slightly with the razor knife blade by twisting it just a tiny bit then squeezing in a little wood glue and clamping it much as you described. Again these were like art studio work tables that just need a flat surface, they were not fine furniture and the veneer layer was quite thin.

I have no idea if this would work for your situation. I have never done it but my bass drum has some bubbles in the inner plys and I have been debating trying this method on it. I purchased an old hoop to make clamp strips that will match the curve of the drum but I haven't been able to bring myself to go at this thing with a razor knife... I'm not sure I can or even should do it.

If you need to get glue into hard to get at places, a syringe and hypo needle do a great job - the people you have to buy them from will look at you funny but it's an old furniture repairer's trick which works a treat.

Cheers,

David

Antipodes,

That is a great idea with the syringes, I used them with very good luck months ago. I fortunately didn't have to buy them, my buddy's wife was taking hormones to get knocked up and she had loads of empty unused ones left.

I don't have pictures but I can describe it better. The bubbles are about 3 inches long and 1-2 inches wide. They have come up about an inch and have split in the middle. I could cut them out but I know that's a bad idea. I would just like to get them close to back to normal. I hope you can help.

So then the inner ply is the only ply that is bubbled and the remaining middle and outer plies are intact?

I'm guessing in the dark here, but I assume that the seam must have had a gap that allowed some water to penetrate under the inner ply and that's how the bubble was created.

The trick is to make that area of wood pliable again and then re-set it with some glue, contoured pieces of wood that mirror the curvature of the shell that can be clamped to hold the bubbled section down while the glue sets and dries...

A steam iron with a contoured bottom would be the ideal tool -or maybe something could be made to suffice. The idea is to get the inner ply maleable without wetting the entire shell and causing even more damage. Maybe you could use some kind of damp rag held against the area and then a blow drier could add the heat...

At any rate, once the wood is made pliable, it's just a matter of getting some glue in there and flattening out the ply with clamps and curved clamping blocks...

Make sure that you don't go too wild with the amount of glue and also make sure that you tape off all the rest of the areas to protect where the glue might otherwise squeeze onto...use the painter's masking tape -the blue stuff or the green stuff.

Yeah, I know a buddy who has some bubbling on the inside of a drum like that. I'm reading all this advice and sitting back thinking - YOU GUYS AND YOUR IDEAS AND METHODS - ARE ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT !!!