Here's the finished beast! I'm fairly happy-ish with how it came out. I've spent some time playing, though not a lot, and it's addicting. (and a great deal of fun!) The sound is very bright with a fair amount of sustain. It came in at right about eleven pounds, I was shooting for under ten, but I think the body straps put me over the top. It can easily be lifted with one hand, and suspending it by a strap over one shoulder is no strain whatsoever.
The heads are of a lighter (thinner) raw hide than I usually use, but I was trying to keep the weight down and I wanted to see what it would be like. I also went with 'natural' instead of bleached. It was more a matter of what my supplier happened to have when I was buying the hide, but I thought, 'what the hell. Might be cool' The lacing (rope) is offset toward one side of the drum (the bottom in the image). I saw a group recently that had all of theirs offset like that and thought I'd give it a try. It doesn't seem to affect the tuning of the heads like I thought it might, so when I re-lace it I might just go back to centered.
The body is 20 inches high, sixteen in diameter and the heads are 20 inches. While I was making it sometimes this seemed way too large, others like it was just right. It did take some practice to get to the point that I wasn't nicking the rim when drumming across both heads, but I'm getting the hang of it now. The size ultimately ended up being quite comfortable.
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