Making my own Renaissance long drum

Making my own Renaissance long drum.

I always wanted a large drum like that owned by my dear colleague Manolo Durán.

His drum has been used by the Oviedo Opera Foundation, by the Asturias Symphony Orchestra in several early music programs. I wanted one like his, but stablished brands do not offer shells in such large sizes so I could make one myself, and buying one was not an option, as they are ridiculously expensive. When I saw a couple of floor toms stored in my workshop, the gears inside my head started working.

This project starts with two 16″x16″ floor toms that I had lying around. One of them was a Sonor from a vintage “Swinger” kit, the other was of unknown brand and procedence. Of course (as you already should know) I couldn´t care less for the woods of these two drums 😉.

Here you have both toms:

Bear in mind that the height of these two drums together was 32″, something not very practical, so I decided to slightly cut one of them so, once together, its height was more convenient: 29″.

I plugged all the holes using wooden dowels, a process that, should you have read previous articles, I am already an expert at 😄. You can also see how dirty the interior was, but not anymore.

To join both shells together, I vertically inserted wooden dowels into the now flat “connecting seam”. The holes in both shells are coincident, so I only had to join the shells inserting the common dowel in the corresponding holes in both drums (not as easy as it sounds!).

I must say this process was quite complicated, as the shells are quite thin, and drilling them and precisely inserting the dowels and making them match the holes in both shells was quite hard. If I am not wrong, I think that I used more than 20 dowels to ensure the correct joining of the two shells. Once everything was glued together, this is how the new shell looks from the inside (still not sanded nor oiled):

The outer seam is PERFECT!

I then sanded both the inside and the outside untill they were perfectly smooth, as if the shell was just one instead of two joined together. I also applied some tung oil to the interior.

Wraping the outer shell was a problem. This drum is 29″ high, so there is no commercially available wrap large enough for this drum. To solve this, I decided to go with a striped design, where narrower bands can be used. I applyed “Fablon” vinyl to cover the large bands (mahogany finish) and thinner strips of beech on the centre. This is how it looks once done. As you can see, the final result is very nice.

I got the counterhoops from Manuel Almeida de Ocampo. They are made of beech and they a single steam-bent piece. Here you can see how I marked them to for drilling (in a 20º angle, so the rope “descends” through them). Once done, I apllied several coats of tunf oil.

I got the goat-skin heads at Baena Sonido, mounted on wooden flesh-hoops. The batter head is slighter thicker than the thinner resonant head.

I used leather pads and tape to make some “ears”.

Done. Time to put everything together using hemp rope:

As a final detail, I added a carry hook so the drum can be hung from a sling.

Here you have some more photos of the finished drum:

Mi Renaissance drum is finished. If you take Manolo´s as a reference (see first photo), you have to know that mine is a little bit larger (his is about 27.5″ high, mine is 29″), so you now have a rough idea of its size. I can tell you that this drum sounds like a thunder, and is great for playing early music or things like the long drum in Aaron Copland´s “Appalachian Spring”.

…et in Arcadia ego.