All drums had been used and transported without bottom heads, so all bottom bearing edges were ruined.

The drums also smelled heavily from basement mould and other stuff. My girlfriend did not allow me to keep them in our house due to the smell.

The rack tom looked pretty ok, but the tom mount was broken; the threads were worn out. I replaced it with a new one. I cleaned the inside of the drum several times with a paint cleaner and repainted it. That reduced 90% of the smell.

This picture was taken after the bearing edges were restored.

The floor tom had a few major issues. First, it had suffered a severe blow to the side and one lug had been punched right through the wrap and broken the wood plies. This had been fixed by flooding the crack with epoxy, without even removing the lug. Luckily I could remove the lug. I sanded the inside of the drum, and especially the big boulder of epoxy. That also removed a lot of wood. I then used a sheet of 1 mm birch plywood to reinforce and repair the drum shell. I sanded the edges of that plywood to make the repair less obvious.

I used the same 1 mm plywood to make a little inlay to place under the lug so that it would be level with the rest of the drum. I considered lifting the wrap that had been punched down and place the inlay underneath it, but decided not to.

Foam had been glued to the inside of the drum for damping. I removed it by sanding.

The drum also had several severe scratches on the inside and I know why: when moving the drums to gigs, the previous owner would place the floor tom, which didn’t have a bottom head, upside down and put pedals, snare stand etc inside it. I used some wood filler to fix the worst scratches, then sanded and painted the inside of the drum.

One of the floor tom leg mounts was broken. Again, the threads were worn out. Some previous owner had fixed this issue by drilling small holes through the floor tom leg, and then put a nail in it! I replaced that mount.

The inside of the bass drum had been spray painted black and green. As pictures show, the batter head with foam damping was still on the drum when painted. The front head looked a bit unusual - it was painted white with regular wall paint. As it turned ot, that drumhead was an old calf skin head! It also had a large chunk of foam glued to the inside. I removed the paint using alcohol, and then tried to remove the foam and the glue. Most of it came off.

I thought of removing the paint from the inside of the bass drum, but in the end I decided to leave it. It won’t affect the sound, no one will see it, and removing it I would have to use chemicals. I also think it is a cute little reminder of the history of the drumset.

I cleaned all the hardware using WD-40. I also used a bit of chrome polish, but that wasn’t really necessary.

Finally, I left the drums to a pro who restored the bearing edges. I put new heads on it and completed the kit with some minor spare parts - tension rods, rubber feet, a new hoop for the floor tom. I think it turned out nice!

I decided to use the calf skin head as front head for the bass drum. I also put a Gibraltar rim mount on the rack tom.

Here is a short video. I’m using a couple of old Zildjian A cymbals, one with some home made rivets. Both cymbals used to belong to my girlfriend’s grandfather. The hihat is a Ufip that came with a kit I bought a few years ago.

I haven't really learnt how to tune these drums yet, but I think they sound ok so far. The rack tom is a little dull and lacks sustain. That may be because of poor tuning or something else. I recorded using a condenser microphone placed above the kit.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHD0lsA344s"]1965 Ludwig drum kit - YouTube[/ame]