It has been many months of preparation, but Eeyore's birthday is this weekend so it was time to get the head on Bubba Taiko 3 (Taiko drum executed in the South Austin Bubba style prototype number 3). The shell is approximately 2/3 of a wine barrel - the staves are glued and then reinforced with birch plywood strips on the interior. The head tensioning system is based on a conga drum - the side plates and lug hooks are conga hardware (it took over a year of searching to find a manufacturer that would ship me wholesale conga parts.) I had to hand-fabricate the tension ring from an 8 foot piece of 3/16" x 1/2" cold rolled bar steel - rolled into a ring with a planetary ring roller and welded with a mig welder. Then I bent v-hooks from 1/4" round cold rolled steel, heating the steel with an acetylene torch to make the bends. These are then welded to the ring to make a conga-style tension ring big enough to fit on a 24" diameter drum head.
The pictures show some of the process - bending and welding a skin ring, working the head onto the drum shell, the finished drum and Sharon beginning the paintings.
No comments:
Post a Comment