Building a Bodhran
Author: adam.rivera
Ξ January 4th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Uncategorized |
About a week ago I took my cheap 18″ Bodhran (the traditional irish drum) and re-skinned it. The difference in sound was amazing! In a week or so I will be building a tunable Bodhran from the ground up but until then here is how I reskinned my old drum.
First I took a flat head screw driver and ripped out the tacks that looked to be holding the skin in place. Apparently the skin was attached with tacks and some strong glue. Next I put the drum (now tackless) in a bathtub full of extremely hot water. This loosened the skin and weakened the glue. I used a knife to peel the skin away from the side of the shell. After I got it started it became quite easy to rip the skin off the drum shell. Next I let the drum shell dry and went hunting for a new skin, new tacks and a soft border for the edge of the drum shell.
I walked to a shop called The Village Bazaar where their drum maker led me to his shop in the basement of the store. It was super cool to see how he made some of his drums. He gave me a stack of drum skins and I found a really nice thin, soft goat skin for $23. Next I went to True Value and picked up a tack hammer, some black furniture tacks, electrical tape and some velcro.
The drum shell was dried so I started to soak the new skin in the hot water to get it loose for the mounting procedure. This next part was the biggest pain in the neck and it took me at least an hour. I looked at the materials and scratched my head trying to devise a good way to mount the skin evenly and quickly before it dried. I took some string and wrapped it around the drum shell and cut it to be a foot longer than the circumference of the drumshell. Then I tied a loop in one end and passed the other end through that loop creating a sort of lasso. I planned to use this “lasso” to hold the skin on the drum shell just long enough for me to tack it in place. Sounds easy enough but it turned out to be much harder than I first imagined.
I put the wet skin on the table and the drum shell upside down, centered on the wet skin. I attempted to bring the edges of the skin up to the side of the drum shell so I could “lasso” it into place but that didn’t work at all. After trying this method for 30 minutes I decided to use electrical tape (which was purchased for a different reason all together) to temporarily hold the edges of the skin in place so I could put the “lasso” around and then finally tack the skin in place.
With the skin temporarily held in place by the electrical tape and the “lasso” I took the soft portion of the vecro and cut it to be exactly the circumference of the drum shell. Then I peeled off the backing to the stickable velcro and wrapped it carefully around the edge of the drum shell and began tacking the skin and the velcro edge in place. I tacked with about 1/2 inch between each tack. Once that step was complete I took off the “lasso” and the electrical tape and waited for the skin to dry.
Once the skin was dry I took out my tipper and tried it out. Due to its large diameter (18″) it had some annoying overtones that needed to be dealt with. I took out the electrical tape and began taping the outer edge of the drum skin. This may seem strange but it acts the same way a plastic outer rim ring does on a snare drum. I taped about 1 1/2 inches in towards the center of the drum.
Well, thats it! The tunable bodhran should be even more fun!