Stretching the skin with Ring-zilla

[Djembe-nerd]

Maui beat,

Are those some of X8 drums that you decoated ?

[Mauibeat]

The plane djembe is a Senagal djembe that I found on E-bay in 2006. Sounds great but is very heavy so I use that drum for dance class's.

The 3 decorated drums are all lighter weight Indonesian drums, that I haul to the Sunday drum circle at Little Beach here on Maui.

The black rope drum was an E-bay drum and needed the rings cut down, interior sealed, and replaced rope on top ring with flat webbing in 2007.

The teal rope djembe was an X8 with a broken head. I cut down the rings, sealed interior, and replaced top ring with flat webbing in 2009.

The red rope djembe was also an X8 with a broken head. Change from 3 ring drum to a 2 ring drum, and replaced the rope from top ring to flat tubular webbing. Sealed the interior, and replaced the existing black rope with red/orange/maroon rope from Drumskulls this spring 2011.

I built the blue dununs from popular wood in around 2006, (I think).

I built the teal dununs from bamboo flooring in 2008.

Maui beat,

Are those some of X8 drums that you decoated ?

[Dugafola]

Thanks Michi,

Thats looks a little more complicated than tightening the non-fold over case. But I will try it one time anyway.

I wonder how do these drummakers do it cos their skins are more than an inch below the ring. They might have some crooked locking pliers

they don't cinch with vice grips under the skin, but below the skin. the vice grips do not have to be right near the ring to be effective.

[michi]

they don't cinch with vice grips under the skin, but below the skin. the vice grips do not have to be right near the ring to be effective.

Not exactly sure what you mean by "below the skin". Can you explain?

Below is a video that shows how I do it. For a skin flap that extends down further below the flesh ring, you could also pull from the bottom (from below the bottom ring) and clamp the vertical off below the bottom ring. This avoids any risk of tearing the skin flap, at the price of adding a bit more wear on the rope, because, when pulling from below the bottom ring, the sheath wears where it pulls over the top loop as well as where it rubs against the bottom loop.



Cheers,

Michi.

[polarflux]

Hey, ring-zilla is an incarnation of an idea I have been thinking about also. Instead of a steel ring, I was thinking of using a plastic 5-gallon bucket lid with holes drilled around the rim to thread rope through. A lid would be plenty ridgid and easy to make. I have not tried this yet but I will on the next rehead.