12 x 6 walnut stave, with inlay

[Seth Dolcourt]

Home stretch.


Ugly Betty, full body shot.

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Up close.

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Sonically, it's tight, tight, tight, with a bright pop. Man, it sounds great. This drum wants to be hit. Too bad the finish is gacked.

Thanks for looking! That's the end of this build. Please let me know of any questions, if there is anything not clear.

Cheers,

Seth

[Roger Benton]

Seth,

looks great, what is the difference in sound between this and a maple ply shell of similar size? I've been threatening to build a snare for a while now but haven't gotten to it, walnut stave was my first choice though.

[Seth Dolcourt]

Hi Roger,

Regrets, I have no good answer for you. It's my belief, given a blindfolded drummer and he having no prior knowledge of a sample of drums, would be no better at identifying the species or construction beyond that of mere guessing.

My son's drum teacher (not blindfolded) instantly said "whoa" when he played my 14 x 5.5 ash stave snare. He had no previous mental database of drum sounds matched to stave shells, so he was in the dark of how to quantify what he was hearing. "Revolutionary War drum" was his first remark. Darker, and woody. He likes 12" maple, ply, usually on the thinner side, and he'll crank the heads as much as he dares. Huge pop, bordering on gun shot crack.

I've since polluted his sensibilities with a 14 x 7 cherry (using a curly wire snare) and a 14 x 9 cherry field / concert drum (which uses a wire gut type snare), the modern version of that Revolutionary War drum he talked about 3 years ago. He geeked out on cross sticking the 14 x 7, finding three different placements of the stick across the head, yielding 3 distinct wood block type sounds. Dunno if he's ever spent that much time pulling sounds out of a ply shell.

The sound of a drum is so dependent on diameter, depth, wall thickness, head selection, tuning, the room it's played in, and are you the one playing, or the in the audience, listening. What wood it's made from becomes a piece of the puzzle, but not the biggest piece.

So....build what you like. And if you build one, may as well build two, since you already have the machine set up. Perhaps one each of maple and walnut, kind of a vanilla-chocolate drum sundae.

Cheers,

Seth

[Mark Duksta]

Hi Seth,

I really like that snare bed cutting jig. When it comes time I might have to "borrow" your design if you don't mind.

Mark

[Seth Dolcourt]

Absolutely! Help yourself. And if you improve it, kindly post.

One process I would not repeat again is using the 45 degree chamfer bit to counter cut the bed's inside edge after the bed is cut. A Microplane, spoke shave or rasp does a much better job. There is no requirement to making the bed's edge match the rest of the bearing edge, you can leave it as is, right off the router. But it's a crafter's touch most guys like to do, and it makes the customers happy to see the same, uninterrupted profile all around the shell.

'N fact, I've been using a Microplane to form the entire bed from start to finish. But the bed jig is fun to make, and sometimes, you just do it for the fun.

Cheers,

Seth