ive never seen or heard of any 3 ply Ludwig shells without re-rings. Ludwig did have 4 ply and of course 6 ply without rerings. maybe yours are 4 ply?

this is a great set. looking forward to you getting them back in shape.

mike

Thank you Mike. I was mistaken, lol to quick in my counting.

I'm excited to get started on them!

Disassembly and cleaning tomorrow along with repairing any ply separation.

Steven, those are going to look good. If your going to play them then I would replace all the lugs with metal ones, but keep the plastic ones. I have been told the hole spacing will work. I hope my ideas for plugging the holes will work for you but maybe someone will have a better idea. It would be tempting to order a sheet of those fast caps in a finished maple just to see how close the finish matches. If it looks good then it might be worth trimming down the fast caps to fit the holes. The wood plug idea is good also but you have to finish them. And I think that is the key right there, the finish. If it matches in color real good then the repair is a success. Someone also mentioned veneer, and that might be the way to go. I have some maple veneer (I think) that I could stain and finish to match my Educators wrap, then send it to you for plugging holes, just let me know!

Good luck!

I agree with jeff on the lugs. my vistalite combo had the plastic lugs. even under moderate tension and playing, they will crack. I imagine of the age of them at this point is a big factor.

mike

I'd be interested in seeing what these plastic lugs look like

up close. Could you show both sides of one of these lugs? Thanx.

That res head on the bass drum is AMAZING!!! So cool! Where do you get one of those?

Curtis

Projects like this are really cool, and I DO appreciate the effort to keep this aspect of percussion history intact.

That said, judging by what I've seen here, I would tend to conclude that the Ludwig "Educator" line appear to be arguably the worst drums ever made. Yikes, plastic lugs?! And those long tension rods look like they're bowed in at a 20 degree angle. I think my old Stewarts would have blown these turds out of the water. :)

the tension rods look longer than usual because they are. on center lug clubdate bass drums, you have longer bowtie lugs. on these, they use the same length lug as a snare drum, which makes them quite a bit shorter.

mike

I'll try to bust out the camera tomorrow! Been a crazy week, hopefully I can document more soon.

I actually think that the owner before me may have used a projector and copied it over. It looks like he used a sharpie when you get up close lol.

I don't know about "the worst drums ever made". The shells are 4 ply maple, the hoops were the same as all other ludwigs, and the rest were club date and standard parts. But the plastic lugs kind of destroyed the potential everything else gave them.

That 20 degree angle is because there's no tension rods on the bottom half, so the ground is pushing the hoop up, which is pushing the tension rods up lol.