.......kind of like "The chicken or the egg"?
I picked up this MIJ Pearl made blue sparkle kit for a great price. The shells are in good shape and the wrap is in great shape with very little fading (actually, these are just slightly turning a green-ish tint instead of fading but still look very good).
As is common, there is some re-ring separation from the shell. I've fixed this before, and it's pretty easy. Nothing some wood glue and spring clamps can't handle. However, in my process of gluing and clamping around the shell, the section next to the part I was clamping would make an audible "crack" and continue to separate, all the way around. I'm essentially "chasing" the separation until it gets back to where I started gluing, which will hold much better than the factory glue. This is a pain and will take time, but is not difficult.
Anyway, I wanted to enclose a few photos because to me, it looks like the shell is separating from the re-ring, rather than the other way around. A little hard to tell in the photos, but when standing above it, the re-ring seems to be perfectly round, whereas the shell seems to be contorting. It will all be fixed and glued down nicely, but it's kind of a weird phenomenon. I'm using painters tape where there is visible gap between the re-ring and inside of the shell. That way the glue stays where I want it and it doesn't run all over the inside of the shell.
In the first photo, I started gluing in-between where all the clamps are now and where the noticeable gap is around 2 o' clock. I'm going to go the opposite direction and do the large gap part last, so that everything else will be held down firmly. I'm using a metric crap ton of wood glue to make sure it really holds. The excess dried glue sands off easily, and I would want to touch up the bearing edges by sanding them anyway, so no big deal there.
Anyway, I'll look forward to getting these done, I'll just need some patience, because the other bearing edge on the bass drum is the exact same. I always thought 12 spring clamps would be enough. Turns out I could use about 40 lol!
V
