AC Drums Drum Making Diary Episode 16 Custom Drums Drum Building

In this weeks custom drums, drum making diary we make some 13" bass drum style hoops, a 8" Maple tom shell and press veneer for some Mahogany shells. We then take the opportunity to showcase our Maker's Mark drum range, just about the best drums money can buy.
Visit our websites
www.acdrums.com
www.drumshellsuk.com
The tunes in this episode are linked below:
Free Music for Videos Music by Mister BoO - En Parallèle - thmatc.co/?l=5...
Free Music for Videos Music by Sebastian McQueen - Night Without Moon - thmatc.co/?l=4...
Free Music for Videos 👉 Music by Lyrrac[al] Beats - [Strung] - thmatc.co/?l=F...
Free Music for Videos 👉 Music by The Sleeping Cliffs - Isms - thmatc.co/?l=1...
Free Music for Videos 👉 Music by Kortofertos - Battlefield Loss - thmatc.co/?l=F...
Free Music for Videos 👉 Music by Peter Guava - Screwed - thmatc.co/?l=7...
Free Music for Videos 👉 Music by Break My Fucking Sky - The Letters We'll Never Send - thmatc.co/?l=4...
#drummer #percussioninstrument #drumbuilding #drums #britishdrums #customdrums #woodworking #snaredrums

[@richardobrien4465]

Great sounding Drums! Interesting that you vary the wood according to the drum. A bit like Pearl Reference I guess. In answer to your questions... Varied backing tracks are good. I watched the whole series of AC videos and it is nice to get some different sounds while I watch you work the magic. Having varied tasks as well as whole drum builds start to finish videos is enjoyable and educational.
It is the wood shell building that I find the most fascinating. Watching your videos has inspired me to go out and buy some Maple, Bubinga and Jarrah plies to try and make a snare drum shell for each wood. I love craft and working with wood so I will find it most enjoyable. I've always fancied creating a stave snare out of some exotic wool. A Scottish Oak Whiskey Barrel perhaps? I love a challenge and it seems our interests are alligned. Watching you have plies glued together as you demonstrate flat constructed combinations pressed into the mould and cold pressed like that is great. From what I can gather, apart from the ready ply drums, combinations of Horizontal and vertical as one variant and vertical, horozuntal and vertical as the other variant is the way forward for flexibility and to get enough stiffness to construct the shell using the plies and the glues to press the shell seams together is genius! Nice to see real shilled craftsmen at work using his hands still - the shill seems to be dying out to the mass producers which is a shame. As a hobby, I've started prototyping veneer combinations with glues and ply combinations on scraps of maple veneer to see how many plies I can construct flat on the bench and having combinations or 2 and 3 plies above seems logical to me. As long as I only have one horizontal ply in any preglued combination I think it will be flexible enough to mould. So when using two outer two ply sheets and three inner three ply sheets to make a 10-ply shell for example I think it sits as follows (abbreviated) H, V, V, H, V, V, H, V, V, H. I guess with glue and up to a 0.6mm ply that would give about 5.5 - 6mm shell. I'll give it a go soon and let you know how I get on! Any tips or tricks of the trade on shell building in your future videos are greatly appreciated! Thanks a million!

[@acdrumsuk]

Thanks for all the comments. The readyply Birch is already ply when it comes to us but is still a cross laminated, it's the only way for strength of any ply, it must have both vertical and horizontal. Don't forget with the veneer you have to press it, I may have only shown that once as it's in another room in the workshop. The hardest thing for me when I started out was getting to grips with moisture content and what it does, how to control it and when and when not to use something, that depends to some extent on your local weather conditions plus glue used, how it's pressed, stored etc

[@richardobrien4465]

@@acdrumsuk Thank you, absolutely! I have tried a few small laminate samples using 0.6mm maple in 2-5 ply configurations using verious glues. So far Titebond III looks favourite but the water in it causes some movoemnt. Been using reinforced ply wood and G-clamps to press the veneers together flat for now. Looking to get a Vacuum Pump and a bag press to start creating flat cross laminated sheets eventually and make a 14 inch mould to start with. That is, when I have learnt the characteristics of the glue, moisture and environmental factors. It is complex alright, however AI helps me a lot! Even the latest Chinese built DeepSeek is awesome to get real answers. Doing lots of research and will probably watch your videos over and over until it sinks in! I will at some point in the near future get some shells from you guys so that I can learn to finish and build a drum once the shell is constructed. I'l start with Maple. Would you recommend 10 or 13 ply shells for hard hitters playing a range of ight to hard rock/metal?