Percusize Me!: Building a Renaissance drum ("long drum").

I have been wanting a large drum, like the one my friend and colleage Manolo Durán has, for a long time.

His drum has been used by the Oviedo Opera Foundation, by the OSPA in some baroque programs... I wanted one like his, but building brands do not offer such large sizes so I could make one myself, and buying one wasn´t an option, as they are ridiculously expensive. When I saw a couple of floor toms stored in my workshop, the gears inside my head started working...

This project starts with two 16"x16" floor toms I had lying around. One of them was a Sonor from a vintage "Swinger" kit, and the other was of unknown brand and procedence. Of course (as you already should know) I couldn´t care less for the woods of these two drums 😉.

Here you have both toms:

Bare in mind that the height of these two drums together was 32", something not very practical, so I decided to slightly cut one of them so, once together, its height was more convenient: 29".

The next thing I did was covering all the holes, a process that, should you have read previous articles, I´m already an expert at 😄. Here you can see the glued inserted dowels and how I cut them. You can also see how bad the interior was, but not anymore... I worked on it during the building process.

In order to join both shells together, I vertically inserted loads of wooden dowels into the now flat edges. The holes in both shells are coincident, so I only had to join the shells inserting the common dowel in the corresponding holes in both drums.

I must say this process was quite complicated, as the shells are quite thin, and drilling them and inserting the dowels was quite hard. If I´m not wrong, I think I used more than 20 dowels to ensure the correct joining of the two shells. Once everything was glued together, this is how it looked from the inside (still not sanded or oiled):

This is how the seam looked from the outside:

Next thing I did was sanding both the inside and the outside untill they were perfectly smooth, as if the shell was just one instead of two joined together. I also applied some tung oil to the interior.

I got another problem when I tried to cover the outside: the drum is so large that no vinyl cover exists or is commercially available. To solve this, I decided to go with a striped design. I used "Fablon" vinyl to cover the large bands (mahogany) and thinner strips of beech on the centre. This is how it looks once applied.

As you can see, the final result is very nice.

The counterhoops are made of beech and I got them from Manuel Almeida de Ocampo. They are a single steam bent piece. Here you can see how I marked them to for drilling (in a 20º angle, so the rope "descends" through them).

Once drilled, I applied some tung oil. Here you can see a raw one and an oiled one.

This photo shows both counterhoops finished and the holes free from shavings. Have a look at the lower left corner: there´s the jig I used to drill the holes to a 20º angle.

I got the goat heads at Baena Sonido, mounted on wooden hoops. The batter head is slighter thicker than the thinner resonant head.

I used natural rope and also made some leather ears:

Done. Time to put everything together:

As a final detail, I added a carry hook so the drum can be hung from a sling.

Mi Renaissance drum is finished... If you take Manolo´s as a reference (first photo), you have to know mine is a little bit larger (his is about 70 cm. high, mine is 29"), so you now have a rough idea of its size. I can tell you this drum sounds like a thunder, and is great for playing early music or things like the long drum in Aaron Copland´s "Appalachian Spring".

…et in Arcadia ego.

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Percusize Me! en español.

Monday, 24 February 2020

Building a Renaissance drum ("long drum").

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