Making Shime

Though you can drum on just about anything (and anyone who plays Taiko probably does) conventional wisdom recommends a drum. Taiko drums are expensive, often prohibitively so. If I purchased my drums I would still be drumming on the arms of my chair. But making them is an entirely different matter. I love making things. All sorts of things. And Taiko drums are no exception. I recently started on a set of tsukeshime-daiko, or what is usally referred to affectionately as shime.

As I make my living creating digital images, it was only logical that the first step for me would be to create a computer model of what I was going to build. The heads aren't included in the image. It shows only the wooden body, made of 16 two inch wide staves, and the fourteen inch steel rings the heads will be stretched on.

If all of the staves are cut correctly they will yield a body with a diameter of just over ten inches, leaving two inches of drum head space on either side for stitching and binding.