Build your own tube toms
Building your own drums
I'm not a craftsman. Bending and shaping planks into sweet-sounding cylinders is for experts with expensive tools and years of experience, so I probably could have called this 'assembling your own drums'. But, putting together pieces you have accumulated by whatever means, into a configuration that is your own, is a challenge in itself!
Most modern drums are just wooden, plastic or metal cylinders with fittings and skins. You can buy most of the parts on ebay. I wanted to see if I could do it myself and do it cheaply. My idea was to try and build a set of Octobans – tube drums. My kit was lacking in the high end. I always wanted a full range of tom toms from very high to very low, like one of my heroes Carl Palmer of ELP. He played a stainless-steel set - a work of art; with a range of sounds from high pops to low rumbles. Wonderful! Stainless steel didn't seem to be an option. I turned the kitchen pan set upside down and they do make a great range of clanky sounds with sticks. But I didn’t want to traipse round scrap yards looking for 6”diameters to fit skins and rims. I thought of plastic waste pipes and couldn’t find 6” in those either. I eventually settled on clear acrylic Perspex, which is readily available on ebay in 150mm tubes – more or less 6”.
Buying parts on ebay
It feels like a lottery at first! Am I going to get ripped off or make an expensive mistake? Will it be worth it when I’m done? I looked at the prices of Octobans and good ones seemed to be around £600 for 8. I later found 4 for around £160 but they looked and sounded plasticy and unimpressive. I was in something of a hurry too, so I didn’t shop around that much. I bought a single 8" acrylic tube initially - just in case it didn't work - from the Wholesale Pos Co for £18.45. Then a 6" 4-lug heavy duty Triple Flanged Hoop for £11.50 from constant percusison and a 6" Evans G2 Coated Head - £12.95 from rstmusic services. Every Octoban I've seen has transparent heads but I like the Evans G2s so went with them and I love them! The lugs were a gamble. I went for mini tom lugs from Highwood drums - 6 for £12.60 hoping they would be big and tough enough and they were. They look great too. The tension rods came in sets of 10 from instruments4music at £7.90. The process of ordering is really simple - couple of clicks here and there - and I usually went for click and collect from my local Argos, so I wouldn't be faced with the frustration of missing deliveries. Apart from my final order of a Bass Drum Tom mount bracket from Goedrumshop which is based in Taiwan, every order was ready within a day or two. This last one took 11 days, which meant waiting around frustratedly to finish the stand off. But the part, when it arrived was perfect for the job. The Acrylic tube looked great and the 5mm thickness was solid and strong. Thinner would've been a problem, I think .
The shell just needed sanding to a softer bearing edge so as not damage the heads. You just sand away the sharp inner and outer edges and make them into a soft curve. Just feel it all the way round. When you're happy that the edge won't wear away at your £12 head, you're done. Next I drilled to fit the lugs. Acrylic cuts and drills like a hard wood but the burrs are a bit harder. You just snap them off. I really liked cutting and filing the acrylic. It was a nice surprise.
I estimated the position to fit the lugs by placing the hoop, skin, lugs and tension rods loosely in place and doing 10 turns of the thread before measuring. I guessed that this would be enough for the lug to get a grip on the rod before tightening the head. I put a mark for the top lug screw at 5cm from the bearing edge and drilled. I used the plastic gasket, which is designed to hold the lug snugly to the drum, to mark the lower screw hole. This worked pretty well. Most of the lugs fitted very snugly into the shell. Just one or two needed extra turns of the drill to widen one of the holes a fraction. Then, with a good shove, they clipped satisfyingly into place and the screws could be fitted inside. I finished attaching one lug before measuring the next, so I was constantly adjusting for any minor errors in measuring or drilling. I took off the head and rim while drilling. The rims have widened holes in them to allow plenty of leeway for fitting so, chances are, if you're careful, you're lugs will be fine. With all four in place I could finally fit the head and tighten gently. To my immense relief - and, I admit, a fair bit of pure joy - the drum looked and sounded great. It tuned smoothly and easily with a wide range of pitches. This was going to work! Each build was easier than the last. There were a couple of mistakes, however. I measured one of the holes 5cm from the bottom of the gasket instead of the top. Duh! The extra hole was out of sight in normal use and I found a rubber stopper to fit snugly into it. I also figured the hole could be useful for fitting an internal mic or electronic trigger as a future project. I also started to fit lugs to the wrong end of one of the drums. The one without the bearing edge. Yes, I'm that dumb. So one of the drums now has 2 bearing edges. Fortunately I only filed the edges minimally - enough to take off the sharpness and feel smooth, so it wasn't difficult to tidy up and straighten the bottom again. The other option was to file all of them to make them match. They look good either way. That's the best thing about doing it yourself - you solve the problem and move on.
When I'd completed 4 drums and played with, and looked at, them for ages. I had to solve the problem of a stand for them. I have a Pearl rack. Indestructible square tubes. The four drums are also quite light, so figured I could hold them in some kind of cradle and then I just needed to fit a tom holder. I couldn't find any sheet plastic to cut and file (which would have been good) so I went for good old fashioned wood. I drew 2 templates on cardboard. One with 4 drums in a line and another with the drums in a cluster. The line would've looked cooler, I thought, but the cluster formation looked a lot better for playing - you could cross over from each drum to any other really easily. I took the cardboard template to B and Q and bought a shelving type board. A builder's merchants would probably have better wood cheaper but time is money too, and the one I used to frequent occasionally is a car park now. I drew round one of the drums to get the size of the holes, then drew around the cardboard template to get a reasonable outline for the drum holder. I cut out a decent shape with a hand-held electric saw and then tackled the drum holes - again by hand. I drilled big circles in the centres and cut outwards in spirals until I had four reasonable-looking circular holes. I was careful to leave myself plenty of filing and sanding room. You can sand some away if the holes are too small but you are screwed if they are too big.
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I reinforced the shape, sanded the top for a smoother look and painted in the same black gloss I use for my rack. Then I found out that the drums didn't fit any more. 2 coats of paint was too much for the drum holes.
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I'm really proud of the project. I'm learning to use a much wider range of sounds and the experience of building gave me a deeper knowledge of the subject - which has been my life's work. I keep thinking about sourcing perspex for a full kit next. Hmmm. A whole kit in gleaming perspex.....hmmmm.......
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The shape was a bit rough so I told myself
a lumpy, cave - man style would work. It's ok for me, but you would probably make something a bit more sleek. I already said I'm no carpenter. The main thing was that, with loads of sanding, the drums fit in nicely. I didn't want to force the drums in and risk scuffing them so I kept sanding until they slid in snugly. They held in place quite well. But the wood seemed a bit weak. If I twisted a drum I could probably crack one of the circles. I decided to reinforce the whole thing underneath. I used 3/4 inch square dowel that I found in the shed and cast-off bits of the original board to piece together the shape. Wood glue dries extremely strong so I was confident that, with just a few pieces I could toughen up the whole frame.
I sanded the paint off around the drums, sanded some more, then repainted in a single, thin coat and the drums fit again. Finally I just had to fit the tom tom holder. This wasn't as easy as it looked because the tom holder is designed fit the curvature of a bass drum. I had to chisel the stand around the edges to fit it snugly. And then it was just a matter of setting the toms into the stand, adjusting the fit with some black tape and playing. The drums actually sit in there quite well. The stand does not hamper the sound because it fits up by the lugs anyway. And the drums are spared the extra holes and hardware necessary for individual tom holders. And I didn't have to spend more dosh on more metal bits. One holds them all.
