Snare Drums

One fancy, one humble

I like music, and I like musical instruments, including drums. I had seen a few variations of how to make a snare drum, so I decided to give it a try. This post is a bit longer than most since it's two projects, but hang in there!

This specific drum shell style is called a stave shell, which means the shell is comprised of numerous blocks of wood cut at angles and glued together to create a ring. Traditional drum shells are made by laminating several thin sheets of wood together into a drum shape. I'm sure you can find people who will argue pros and cons of each, but they both work quite well, and if either drum sounds bad, it's probably because of the person playing it!

Since I didn't know what I was getting into, I wanted to start with a low-cost version first. I chose Poplar for the shell wood, and for all the hardware, I actually just purchased a relatively low cost snare drum on sale and took all the hardware from it!

Once the staves are glued up into a ring, I use an elaborate jig I made, along with an electric router, to mill the exterior and interior of the ring. In the case of the Poplar shell, I intentionally created subtle scallops on the inside of the shell, which you can see in the interior photos. It's just a decorative element I wanted to try. I think it's great, and I have ideas for more of that in the future.

After that's done, there's some additional jigs and routing required to create the top and bottom bearing edges (the parts of the shell the drums heads contact). Once the shell is completely shaped, it's time to sand and finish the shell. I finished the Poplar shell with a semi-transparent white enamel paint, which I thought would contrast the black hardware nicely and still allow the simple Poplar grain to show.

After finishing, I carefully laid out all the drilling for the hardware, drilled all the holes, and assembled all the hardware. It's a drum!

After finishing the Poplar snare, I felt a little more confident (rightfully so or not!) in investing a bit more in a more substantial drum.

I had a nice piece of what I believe is English Walnut, and I wanted to use brass for the hardware. I have a couple pictures of the finished shell without any hardware, so you can really get a sense of what the shell is like, which came out beautifully.

Piecing out high quality hardware for a drum like this is quite expensive (think hundreds of dollars), but I didn't want to go to the effort to make a shell like that and then skimp on the hardware. There was a shortage of brass lugs when I went to order, so I decided to go with black lugs, and I really like how that turned out.

These were a ton of work, especially since I also had to make all the jigs for the first time, but they were also quite rewarding. Future plans include trying to turn a drum shell on a lathe. I'll keep you posted.