How To Build A Drum Set

Past DAVE CONSTANTIN

Of all the reasons you might take for wanting to build your ain DIY Drum Set, the almost of import one has nothing to do with beingness applied. Information technology has to do with desire. Because the thing virtually building your first kit – the affair I learned, anyway – is that it actually needs to be a labor of love.

A project with so many finicky lilliputian pieces and irreversible steps will always take longer and exist more than fraught with setbacks than you want to believe at the showtime.

That being said, afterwards the struggle is over and you lot're able to sit back and take a long, loving await at this fully formed instrument you just brought into the world, you'll forget all about that other stuff and merely bask in the warm glow of satisfaction that comes with seeing something like this through – preferably while wailing away on it with sticks.

So just to exist clear: Building your own diy drum set from scratch is 100-per centum worth the effort. But don't expect the wrong kind of advantage. If your motivation is only to relieve coin, for instance, the justification for this project is going to be hard to square, especially if you believe your time is worth anything at all.

Every bit any drummer knows, nosotros live in an historic period of plenty when it comes to gear, and information technology's scary-easy to go online right now and buy a perfectly playable, brand-new, entry-level diy drum set for a few hundred bucks.

Sure, y'all could become the DIY route with only the cheapest materials available and chop-chop slap together your own version of one of those off-brand pupil kits. But even if you could practice information technology cheaper (doubtful), all you'll take to testify for your considerable effort is … a crappy diy drum set. And at that place are enough of those in the world already.

If you're going to practise information technology, practise information technology right. Aim as high as your budget will permit, and build the kit you want. If yous succeed, you'll accept something that could very well rival a high-end offer from a top pulsate manufacturer. If you lot fall short, you lot'll still cease up with something you tin be genuinely proud of, even with some ruined shells or other catastrophes factored in.

Granted, the chances of you slam-dunking this affair on your first endeavor and rivaling the decades of experience hard-earned by those who make their living building drums is fairly slim. But you're guaranteed to learn a thing or 2, and maybe even enjoy it.

Who knows, this could trigger a waterfall effect and before you know it, you'll detect your name situated amid the titans of drum making. One step at a time, though.

Laying the groundwork The options for this kind of build, of course, are limitless. That's what makes it then exciting. But you'll have to piece of work out that 57-piece tubular circus you're envisioning on your own fourth dimension.

This is a applied tutorial on how to build an understated yet elegant 5-slice diy drum set that requires minimal tooling and materials and no particularly esoteric equipment, skills, or fancy shop space – I completed the entire project, start to finish, on the balcony and in the living room of my apartment using a fair amount of homemade jigs and setups to brand up for whatever lack of specialty tools.

There obviously isn't enough room in one article to get extraordinarily deep into the specifics of each part of the process – there are many excellent resources for that, a listing of which I supply at the finish of this article – but this should give you a good indication of what'southward involved, with visual references for each step of the process.

Too, the steps outlined here are foundational, so y'all'll be able to use the concepts and techniques to build many unlike types of kits. The kit I've built consists of components graciously donated by the companies involved to showcase what's possible, but you can build this exact kit for the cost breakdown included on folio 64.

The maple shells that brand up the chief torso of the kit are from Keller – a relatively new formulation called Magnum that features the same high-form maple and assembly technology as Keller's VSS shells, but with plies that are nearly 40 per centum thicker.

The primary snare is a solid-ply walnut shell from Vaughncraft, a company long known for outstanding solid-beat drums. The Keller shells received a curly-maple veneer expertly done by Eric Sooy, owner of Drum Foundry and Black Swamp Percussion.

The hardware came from Drum Factory Direct, a one-terminate-shop for pretty much any drum components you tin can imagine. And Remo supplied the heads. The rest of the finishing materials and tools were purchased separately.

As for less tangible costs, if I were billing for time on this project, I'd estimate nearly 20 hours, although in reality I completed information technology over the course of weeks in seize with teeth-size chunks of time snatched abroad from a busy schedule – the way any hobbyist most probable would.

It'southward also difficult to put a hard figure on the research, planning, setup, mistake correction, etc., that are built into this kind of undertaking. Simply but know that it'due south not going to come together in a weekend.

One concluding annotation: There are countless means to screw this thing up, both big and small.

Failing to double-check a single misplaced lug mark is enough to tank a whole crush (unless you're going for the Swiss-cheese expect). So take your fourth dimension and recall things through, consult any and all available resources, stay flex-ible with your expectations, and before you know it you'll be rocking out on your very own homespun diy drum set up built to your specs with your own two hands.

And so permit'southward get started.

THE BUILD

1.

Nix beats the ease of a wipe-on finish. But before the final varnish could exist applied, I utilized a popular technique for figured forest known as "popping the grain." The idea is to utilise a dark colour to highlight the finish-grain of the figuring and give information technology subtle stardom from the surrounding lighter wood. Under the concluding finish, the woods takes on a 3-dimensional quality, or "chatoyance," that tin can exist dramatic.

I used a TransTint aniline dye for this, Dark Vintage Maple, which you can club online or notice at specific woodworking stores like Woodcraft. To do this, you simply wipe on a diluted application of dye to shells that you've sanded with no finer than 320-grit sandpaper (any finer and you'll close the pores and foreclose the finish from absorbing into the surface properly).

After some trial and error with unlike colors and dye ratios with a scrap piece of veneer that I'd glued to a board and outlined with a simple examination grid using thin strips of painter'southward tape, I went with a ratio of two drops of dye to i oz. of denatured booze.

I was warned this procedure might interfere with the mucilage bond of the veneer, but after testing on scrap and on the bottom of the bass drum (pictured above), I felt confident it would be fine. It was.

2.

Later on the dye dries, sand back the entire shell with 220-dust sandpaper using a padded sanding block. The dye will have penetrated deeper into the end-grain figuring, leaving a subtle distinction with the surrounding "flat" areas of bare wood that will really show up beautifully under the topcoat.

Here I'thousand working on one of 2 cardinal support jigs suggested in the fantabulous tutorial DVD Guerrilla Drum Making, which offers a wealth of practical tips that I pulled from generously for this projection. This jig is simply a cymbal boom stand angled at 90 degrees and wrapped with padding. Information technology proved immensely useful throughout the procedure.

3.

After any sanding performance, thoroughly vaccuum out the dust or information technology volition show upwardly equally lite specks underneath the stop.

PRO TIP: When sanding or finishing, always go in the direction of the grain.

iv.

Follow that up with a good wipe down with tack cloth. You can come across how much grit remained lodged in the pores even later vacuuming.

5. & six.

The next stride is to use a seal coat – in this case a very thin layer of rattle-tin clear shellac, which you lot tin pick upwardly at any hardware store. This will provide a barrier between the wood and cease. The beauty of shellac is that it'due south non-toxic (though still non something you want in your lungs, thus the respirator) and compatible with virtually any cease you want to apply over it.

This is the makeshift "spray booth" I set up on my deck to catch overspray, along with the other support jig suggested in Guerrilla Drum Making – a hi-hat stand with a piece of 0.75″-thick MDF serving as a lazy susan of sorts. This jig proved to be another lifesaver when information technology came to finishing, drilling, and applying hardware later.

7.

Scuff sand the shellac after it dries with 220-dust – merely plenty to smoothen it out just not cut through it.

viii.

The cymbal-stand jig in action during the scuff sanding of the hoops. Note the dust mask. Safety beginning!

ix.

I wanted to apply the easiest, most-durable, and most attractive finish available. And while the finishing world is dense with options that encounter 1 or more of those criteria, very few can avowal all three. General Finishes Arm-R-Seal can. A combination of oil and polyurethane, it comes in Satin, Semi-Gloss, and Gloss varieties. I opted for the Semi-Gloss.

I applied the Arm-R-Seal using a "French-polish" rag – but a few layers of square T-shirt cloth balled upwardly and held together with a rubber band. I simply held the applicator still and rotated the lazy-susan hi-hat stand up, dipping the applicator back in the oil when the run started to feel tacky.

The biggest claiming with this terminate is not letting it tack up as well much before you've finished. It's very difficult to get back and alloy once it starts to prepare upward, which happens in merely a few minutes. Only if you're careful and practice very thin coats, it's a pretty painless process.

10a. & 10b.

The other challenge with any type of end you lot're attempting in an uncontrolled surroundings – and this goes double for wipe-on oil finishes like this one that have 6—12 hours to dry – is preventing dust and droppings from finding their way to information technology like moths to a flame. I came up with a solution that proved very effective.

I used the boxes the shells came in, cut out a square on elevation, and stretched a double layer of T-shirt fabric over the hole, secured with packing tape. Immediately after applying a layer of finish to the shells, I placed them under the boxes and put over-turned fans on pinnacle to blow positive pressure through the T-shirt "filter" into the box.

This had the dual effect of ensuring no dust could notice it's manner in and cut down the drying time significantly.

11.

Superfine sanding between coats is essential. The directions on the Arm-R-Seal can recommend 0000 steel wool, but to avoid the annoying shedding fibers and added cost of that approach, you can only employ a piece of folded up paper handbag (of the standard supermarket diverseness). Information technology'south equivalent to about 800-grit sandpaper and will get the task done just fine with a niggling elbow grease.

12.

Use a razor blade to advisedly shave downward runs between coats, which seem particularly hard to avert on the bass drum hoops.

13a.

To make information technology like shooting fish in a barrel, I opted for double 45-degree bearing edges on all the drums, using a brand-new router chip to ensure the cleanest possible cut. Since I don't own a router tabular array, I fabricated one out of a piece of 0.75″-thick MDF with a hole cut out of the center.

MDF is inherently apartment and stable, and as long as y'all set up information technology on something equally flat and stable that will support the weight of yous pushing down on the shell during the cutting process without warping or slipping, you should exist golden. Hither I'm using two tire ramps for the motorcar turned on their side because that's what I had available and they worked nifty.

13b.

With no easy way to spiral this detail router base of operations down, I had to become creative (a magical opportunity for the industrious DIYer). I used metal plumber's record looped over the handles and screwed to the underside of the table. (That flexible metal tape has gotten me out of more than jams than I can count.) Lag bolts allowed me to tighten upwards the slack and cinch the router base tight to the table. It never budged.

13c.

Everything in position and set up for cut. The ramps offered only plenty clearance for the router when I turned the table over, and the low height allowed me to get over the elevation of the crush easier than if it was at standard waist peak. Moving the ramps in close to the router ensured a solid, flat base at the most important role of the table – the area straight around the cutter-caput.

14a.

Once you've got your setup carefully calibrated, the actual cut function is a breeze. You tin can use the "steering wheel" approach – which I'm using here – or move the whole vanquish around the blade, using a lot more than of the table real estate. I've seen a lot of debate over which is better, only as long equally y'all keep going around until y'all don't hear any more cut, y'all should exist expert.

14b.

On the left side of the router table I set up the "leveling station," which consists of pieces of gummy-backed 220-grit sandpaper used to ensure the begetting begetting edge is as flat as possible.

14c.

Blue chalk makes it easy to run into the high points you withal need to sand down once you lot start flattening edges.

15a. – 15e.

Later a off-white amount of deliberation and research, I decided to cut the snare beds for both the primary and side snare at 0.125″ deep and only wide enough to span the lugs on either side. I hogged out most of the material using a straight fleck on the router table, then used a sanding block to ease the transition.

A ane″—i.25″ taper seemed to offer a gradual enough transition to get all the wrinkles out of the head and not leave a abrupt corner that could puncture the film. This is somewhat delicate piece of work that takes a skilful amount of experience and attention. Don't rush it!

16.

The main snare pulsate outfitted with tape for laying out the hardware. I opted to put the throw-off on the seams of both snare drums, and ran the seam in line with ane set of lugs on the other drums. If you're annihilation like me, these minor aesthetic choices can be the kind of thing that keeps you upward at night.

17.

To lay out the hardware, identify a caput and hoop on top of the drum, tape them down, and so hang the tension screws downwards through the holes. Slide all the tension rods to the far left or correct of the hole and mark aline on tape where they fall on the shell, being areful to hold the pen or pencil at the same bending for each mark.

17a.

Extend the line with a combination square.

17b.

Use a tape "bridge" in the middle of the longer shells to extend the line to the opposite side, which will aid in symmetrical layout whether you're using in-line or staggered lugs on your shells.

xviii. & 19.

To figure out proper lug-height placement, hang each tension rod from the hoop and thread it into the lug past two total turns. Wherever the elevation screw hole on the lug sits on the line is where you tin make your offset marker. In the case of these mini tube lugs, with no swivel nut and two 0.25″ naught-clearance holes per lug offer no margin for error, perfect alignment is essential.

To ensure that, I filed down two sawed-off screws to precipitous points and used them every bit heart-point punches in the lug screw holes, tapping marks into the shell with a dead-blow to indicate exactly where I'd need to drill. This also speeded up the layout process considerably, saving me from measuring 56 separate times for every single lug, hoping each time I'k not a fraction of an inch off on whatever measurement.

twenty.

Deepen each indentation mark with a spring punch to set it definitively in the shell and give the drill scrap buy.

21.

Be sure to hold the bit perfectly perpendicular to the shell when drilling out the holes.

22.

The hi-lid table works great for assembly too. Black nylon gaskets become between the shell and lug at every connectedness point. They piece of work not only every bit physical buffers, merely also every bit spacers to keep the tension rods at the right altitude. Plus, they're a squeamish aesthetic affect.

23.

The inline lug placement created a fleck of a problem on the 6″-deep side snare, where I had to move the lugs closer to each edge by a fraction of an inch to keep them from butting into each other. But one of the washers in each grouping still had to be trimmed back to avoid overlapping. Since it'due south hidden under a coated head I wasn't also concerned with the advent.

24.

Marshal the bassd rum legs by heart, being certain they're non fully extended or retracted merely are going to hold the forepart edge of the bass drum upward by 0.5″ or then. Then use the gasket every bit a template to ensure perfect alignment and spiral placement.

PRO TIP: I used medium-strength thread-locking compound on all the components I deemed "permanent" – namely the screws for the bass drum legs and snare throw-offs, and the threads on the airvent grommets (one per drum – placed directly betwixt lugs on the lower 3rd of each trounce).

25.

The finished kit!

Source: https://drummagazine.com/how-to-build-your-own-drumset/