Shime Maintenance

It's been years since I made some of these drums.  I've gone through the process of unlacing them and re-lacing them as the heads have stretched a number of times, but it's always . . . unpleasant.  I end up with very sore hands, broken fingernails, a sore back and an overwhelming desire to find a better way to do it the next time.  I've had a number of other drummers suggest that I might switch to turnbuckle drums, but I really don't want to do that. I like the way the lacing looks much better, and it appeals to my traditionalist tendencies. I have more than once thought to myself I wished they could be turnbuckle drums when I want to tighten them and laced drums when I want to play them.  Then it occurred to me that I might be able to come close to that very thing.

First, I sat down at my computer and created a design for a wooden ring that I then cut on the CnC out of 3/4 in plywood.

I left recesses for the rope, but tried to maximize the amount of wood in contact with the steel ring around the outside of the drum head. One for the top and one for the bottom.

This is what it looks like fitted on top of the drum head.  You can see how it gives access to the lacing holes but still rests on top of the ring instead of on the hide of the head itself.

The next step was to add the 'turnbuckles', which in this case were simply a bunch of bar clamps that I could tighten down a little bit at a time on each side to make sure it stretched the head evenly.  It takes a lot of clamps, but once the heads are tightened to the desired pitch I just laced it up tight and took the clamps off and it was ready to go. And I was able to get the heads much tighter than I had in the past.
All in all I was very happy with this as a solution.

I'm still here and still drumming!

Recently I've been exploring interesting similarities between traditional Japanese shinobue and traditional Irish flute.  There a number of very similar techniques used in the playing of both types of music and similar structures in the songs themselves (sometimes).  Because I was listening to music of both types the all knowing google presented me with an opportunity to watch the video below; A collaboration between Kodo, the preeminent taiko ensemble, and the Donal Lunny Band, one of the driving forces behind traditional Irish music being popular outside of Ireland.  Check it out, it's pretty cool, and see if you can spot how similar these two traditions really are.