Using Contact Cement to Apply Drum Wrap

The past few weeks I’ve been waiting to get supplies in to build a new custom drum set for a P.Ellis Drums artist. I recently started the build process in my wood/drum shop. Like I have said before every time I build a new drum or drum set I learn something that changes the way I think about drum building. This time has been no different. I ordered all of the supplies that I didn’t have on hand and when they got here I immediately began to unpack and count my supplies to make sure that they had sent me all of the right supplies, and to make sure they had sent the right amount. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started working on a drum set and have been pretty much done with the finishing process, cutting the bearing edges and drilling the holes for hardware only to find that I’m missing 1 key piece of hardware that makes it to where I can’t ship the drums out to the owner. I have finished a drum set and had to wait for another 2 weeks to get 2 tube lugs that were supposed to be in my initial order but the supplier somehow miss counted….Lesson Learned: ALWAYS CHECK YOUR SHIPMENT OF SUPPLIES!

This is my first time working with this particular supplier on a full drum set order and I can honestly say this has been the best customer service experience I have ever had with a drum supply company.

Another drum build and another lesson learned: Don’t use this product to wrap drums –

Eco-Friendly Contact Cement

I figured in honor of  Earth Day I would try to use the Eco-Friendly contact cement… This was a bad idea. I “scarified” both surfaces and applied the contact cement to both surfaces (2 coats) and waited about 30 minutes as I would with any other contact cement and tried to stick the 2 pieces together….and there was a bond…but definitely not a strong bond. I left the drum over night to see if it would be any better when I came back. It was not. It’s not a good thing when I can actually peel the wrap off the drum with very little effort…So I just peeled off the wrap, removed the dried contact cement from the shell and the wrap (which was actually pretty easy…this eco-friendly stuff is known for it’s easy clean up). So after wrapping the drums and then deciding that I had to start over I wasted about 2 days. Not my idea of being productive.

DAP Weldwood Contact Cement (flammable)

I did however go back to using the DAP weldwood contact cement that I have used in the past and had great results from…and this time I used the gel formula…which I found out that I love. I will use from now on. It doesn’t run, which means it is less messy, which means it doesn’t get it all over me or my workspace.

I leave you with a couple of shots from the past week: