Advanced Drum Building Tools

Here is the 2nd part to the “Drum Building Tools” series. In this post, I briefly discuss some of the drum building tools and supplies that you might want to get your hands on if you plan on building drums more often than just once. Again if you only want to build a snare or even a full kit, but you don’t want to invest in buying tools, refer to this blog post to learn about building drums with only a screwdriver.

Advanced Drum Building Supplies and Tools

Tools I own and use for cutting bearing edges:

• A Router
• Router Bits
• A Router Table
  • You can buy router tables from most hardware stores, but I recommend building your own table so you can easily route drums that are larger in diameter than standard router tables allow. (I have router table building plans in the eBook)
• A “Truing” Sanding Table
  • There are many ways of going about making a truing table, which I explain in the eBook. The basic idea of using a truing table is to allow you to start, and make sure that your edge remains perfectly tru all the way around the bearing edge, in other words, start with a flat and level edge, and make sure the bearing edge doesn’t have dips or curves.

Tools I own and use for marking the hardware layout on a drum shell:

• Layout mat or cake dividing layout mat
• Blue Painters Tape
• Pencil
• Combo Square

Tools I own and use for drilling holes for hardware:

• A Drill (A right angle drill is preferred for when you need to drill from the inside of the shell on smaller size shells)
• A Drill Bit Set (You’ll need different sizes bits to drill different size holes for the different sizes of hardware)

Tools I own or use for cutting wrap:

• Long table or workbench
• Swanson 100-Inch Cutting Guide
• Utility Knife
• Adjustable C-Clamp

Questions or comments? Please leave it below and I’ll get back to you!