Drum building progress, part 2
In Part 1, we blew up a couple of barrels and started gluing them together.
After gluing the 4 pieces together, next was to glue the 4 to 4, and
a 4 to 2 as this barrel had 30 staves. This doesn’t seem to be any kind
of standard as the second barrel has 34. 
Bringing the project inside to do the last gluing, something didn’t look right.
Somehow I ended up with about 420 degrees from a 360 degree circle. I pondered this for a few days.
This was much smaller than what I expected. I figured that the drum heads would be about 26” diameter but these are just a little over 19”. Where had I gone wrong?
Eventually I figured it out. I had glued solid edge to solid edge. These barrels had been used to age whiskey and while they contained whiskey, the wood would have swelled making the liquid tight seal you would expect from a drum. After sitting in the sun for a while they had dried out, shrunk a bit and hadn’t swelled back up. I left these on the kitchen floor for a few days, stepping over them as I went through my life. I figured I’d wasted the first drum because initially it looked like I had less than a circle. By this time, the glue had dried up pretty solid, and the glued edges were probably stronger than the wood itself. I did manage to break the 6 piece into 3 pieces with 2 staves each, but this was more than I needed.
Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, I decided that I might be able to get the first batch together with a little bit of planing to make the angles work. Turns out I got lucky in that the three 8-stave sections went together to be basically a circle.
Duck tape to hold it together while I place the pieces… 
and a strap to keep it pulled together evenly. 
After a few days, the glue had a chance to fully set. These are pretty strong. I haven’t tried to sit on them, but I’m pretty sure it would take a bit of weight.
The jointing was a little sloppy in places, it being a first time and
all, so some significant sanding was needed. I picked up a belt sander
from Harbor Freight and some 36 grit belts to make some mods. 
In this picture you can see the result of my being a little distracted durig a moment of cutting down the staves. A couple of them ended up a little bit short. The rim was pretty regular on the other end, so I just cut about 1/2” off the top on the table saw.
You can also see in this picture that I have numbered the staves on
the next barrel so it should be easier to piece it back together as it
was. 
Where all of this is happening.. 
When I glued the larger pieces together, they didn’t always line up
right. Here you can see the mismatch. It’s not too bad on this one, but
it was worse on the other. I 
Here are the two shells after I’ve been sanding the edges for a while. The one on the left had the r ridge from the barrel’s top cut off because of uneven gluing and misaligned pieces.
Now I need the steel rings. Working on that part.
My djembe and other bass drums have rings made from round steel that has been wrapped in fabric. i I noticed that they have a tool for making rings at Harbor Freight for about $100, and I was thinking that I might go that way after seeing some videos on making such rings.
You can buy steel rod at the hardware store but it’s usually sold in lengths of about 48”. A 26” diameter drum would need a piece of steel that was π * diameter, or something on the order of about 78”. I looked online for where i could find 8’ lengths of the stuff, but found that yes, i could get the materials but the shipping would be as much as the materials.
Another thing I learned from a friend who works with steel is the rod comes from the factory in 144” segments. The logistics of that is a little tricky for my little 1 car garage shop that overflows into the driveway when I am doing actual work. How would I move 12’ pieces of steel?
Then i took a measurement of my current drums. They have 3/8” diameter rings. The Harbor Freight tool can only do 1/4” rings, and the next step up in ring rollers costs over $1000, so I’m going to have to have these made by a shop. I’ve contacted a couple local places but they haven’t gotten back to me. So the search continues.
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