Week 2: Carclew Fellowship (20-24 April)
And that’s a wrap.
The last fortnight has been so surreal but also immensely rewarding. I feel more confident about my approach to percussion repairs and now have a roadmap for how to turn this into a robust career.
The second week of my fellowship focused on more involved repairs, moving from servicing into restoration and even a bit of fabrication. Although more advanced than projects that I’d attempted on my own, I relished the challenge to expand my skill set.
Same as my previous post, I’d like to share some highlights from the second and final week of my fellowship
Alterations
This week we cut a drum in half.
When I first got into percussion repairs it was from a performer’s perspective. Over time it morphed to also include my passions for history and preserving endangered crafts or historical objects. During this fellowship, however, I’ve had to adjust my thinking again to approach instrument servicing from more of a business sense.
What repairs are worth the time, effort and money to undertake?
What does the customer need/want most?
Is the purpose of the repair to restore/improve functionality or return the instrument to “as new from factory” condition?
Well sometimes the customer wants their drum resized and, correspondingly, I have to hide my historian hat in the back of the cupboard while we saw an instrument in half.
Of course, resizing a drum leads to a whole series of other considerations and valuable lessons to learn, including:
Bearing edges: knowing how to create a new one or, indeed, how to improve upon factory made ones.
Wrapping: knowing how to apply drum wrap to a shell, what glue to use and what pitfalls to watch out for.
Renewal
Sometimes repairs require stripping an instrument down to its base components and starting again. The trick is knowing how to do so with respect to the instrument’s original construction and with clear awareness of the desired end product.
Finishes: knowing how to remove old finishes with scrappers or sanding, and the variety of new finishes and coatings which can be applied to prepared surfaces.
Lapping: knowing how to create new heads for djembe, snare drums, and bongos using goat, calf and kangaroo hide, and knowing which skin types are most appropriate to each drum.
Connections
As percussionist there are few things more annoying than a rattling resonator, unresponsive pedal or stand that keeps collapsing. The culprit for the majority of these problems is usually the connection points. It’s funny how when you start looking more closely at instruments, you stop seeing them as just objects and more a collection of screws, clasps and locking mechanisms. Lessons in this area included:
Threads: knowing how to spot a stripped thread and how to rethread them.
Rivets and rivnuts: knowing how to remove them without damaging the instrument and how to add new ones later when you want to put everything back together.
Timpani: knowing how the portability of different models (particularly Adams and Majestic) can affect the pedal’s responsiveness and how to correct this.
Vibraphones: knowing how they are constructed and key restoration problems, particularly for Premier instruments.
Well, that’s all for today. Take care and happy playing!
