I have a 1957 Rogers Holiday snare drum that used to belong to my great grandfather. I inherited it from and the rest of his kit (which is actually a Leedy trap kit from the 1920s, but thats another post....) from my uncle when I was about 8 years old, and they've been with me for the last 26 years. My uncle had it when he was a kid, and i plan on passing it onto my daughter (who at 20 months old im teaching the drums on her own little Pearl kit). Its very special to me and my family.
About 6 years ago I started the process of restoring the drum. I buffed out the shell, polished all the metal work, sourced a correct strainer for the one that was missing pieces, etc. But as predictable as the Japanese train schedule, the lugs were all in varying states of cracking.
So I followed the famous "lug reinforcement tutorial" on all the lugs, brought it up to tension slowly and easily, and one end of one of the lugs just...broke off. I adhering it back on with the same moldable epoxy, but to no avail.
So due to frustration, I gave up for a few years.
Then I saw the new Rogers company was making replacements. Halleluja. But just my luck, turns out I have one of the large Bread & Butter lugs, and nobody makes replacements for those....
So here I am a few years later, and my great uncle, who is now in his 90s, has been asking if he could see his father's drum. The man's not getting any younger, so I've picked up where I left off in trying to figure out how to make this drum look and sound as great as he remembered when he was a kid.
As far as I know, I only need one lug. And I really, really, do not want to drill this shell to accept the smaller repro Rogers lugs. I'm a competent craftsmen, but I just don't have it in me to modify it. But if I have literally no other option but to one pay an arm and a leg for one rare large size B&B that's good enough to reinforce and then hope and pray that it survives tension, and then hope the reinforcements hold well enough that my daughter can play it then pass it down to her kids...or saddle my future grandkids with the task of finding 120 year old failure prone lugs...or replace then with the newer small ones and have them last forever.
I know at one point there was another guy who was making repros, but his site is dead and I'm assuming they were the small size lugs anyway...at the time it was still up I didn't have the budget to buy them.
I hear people talk about getting them welded and re-chromed, but unless you have a welder who is skilled enough at TIG to fix an old part like this while also knowing how to reinforcement to prevent future failures AND THEN rechrome it and have it look original - seriously, if you're out there and have done this and you know for a fact its a 100% success rate, let me know...
I'm a space propulsion engineer and I know some very skilled welders. I also MIG weld with a reasonable degree of competence. And I wouldn't trust them or me to attempt this fix.
I'm kind of at my wits end here with this project. I don't know what to do. I want it to be as original as possible, but I also want it to be a playable instrument that will last for generations. And boy would it mean the world to me if my great uncle could see and hear the drum one more time while he's still around.
I can't even find a large size B&B, and I've been looking.
You guys have any thoughts?
