Momentarily Side Tracked

Materials for the drums I'm currently building are on their way. I needed something to fill my idle hands, so . . .

I bring my own bachi with me to practice every week, like I'm pretty sure most taiko drummers do. That used to be a total of two; one for my right hand and one for my left. As the years went by I would occasionally break (chip, crack, splinter or sometimes dramatically explode) a bachi while I was playing. So, I started bringing an extra set. Seemed like the prudent thing to do. More time went by and I started to have different sized bachi for different sorts of things. Longer ones for some pieces, larger ones for playing the Odaiko, more recently smaller ones for playing shime. Then I discovered that different types of wood affected the sound of what I was playing . . . well, ultimately the point is that I bring a lot of bachi back and forth with me to class. More than I can easily carry. It's a testament to how obsessed I am with the giant drums, I guess.  In any case, I needed an easier way to carry them and my happi  and tape for blisters and all the other things that I often want with me. I was thinking about it one afternoon (quite some time ago, actually) and I jotted a little sketch onto a random piece of paper of what I thought a good bachi bag might look like.

If it's not that clear what's what, I apologize, but it was enough to keep the idea firmly in my head so when I finally got sufficiently tired of playing pick up sticks with my bachi every time I tried to carry them all from my vehicle into class I had a good place to start.
I had some unbleached fairly heavy canvas from a previous project. First thing I did was estimate the finished size I was shooting for.  I measured out a backpack I have, I measured around the brim of my hat (it looked like a good size) and when I had a rough idea of how big around I wanted the cylinder of the bag I took a handful of my bachi and laid them out on the fabric to get an idea of how many pairs would fit in a bag of that size. I wanted some 'empty slots' for future types and sizes of bachi that I haven't discovered yet but am sure to not be able to live without once I do, so I left space for more.

The white you see there isn't the table top or a work surface, that's the piece of fabric I'm making the bag out of.