Owners of vintage era kits often faced the failure of their hardware long before they were ready to part with the kit. When a
part malfunctioned or became obsolete, they would sometimes
attempt an upgrade on a drum they were particularly attached
to. Unfortunately, skills behind the kit don’t always transfer to
other trades like woodworking or drawing a straight line!
For this demonstration, I’m going to patch a large irregular
(rat) hole in an early 60’s Gretsch bass drum shell that is to be
recovered with a wrap. This repair will only be visible on the
inside of the drum, and in this case, painted afterwards. These
repairs are by far the easiest to disguise.
When a drum comes into my shop that is clearly the victim of
do-it-yourself drum surgery, the first thoughts that go through
my mind are “What were they thinking? Who would do that
to an instrument?” Some attempts I’ve seen at mounting hardware on a drum seem downright desperate. I’ve come across
drums that look as if trapped rats had gnawed their way out,
and then someone put a mount over the hole to cover it!
I start by patching the tear-out made when the offending hole
was drilled in the shell in the first place. Using the table saw,
I cut a thin strip of hard maple for my patch material. I do a
rubbing of the shape of each tear-out with pencil and paper. I
then glue these rubbings to the maple,cut out the shapes with
a band saw, and shape them to fit with a chisel. Once I get a
tight fit, I glue them in place with wood glue and let it dry.
The good news is the damage is not irreparable. Of course,
a modified shell can never look as it once did, and the success of the repair depends largely on the final finish of the
drum (stained, lacquered, wrapped, etc). However, the damage acoustically and visually can be minimized in most cases,
inside and out, with a little effort and the right materials.
I clean up and level the patches with a spindle sander to prepare the drum for re-drilling. Re-drilling the hole gives me a
cleaner edge for fitting the maple veneer plug. To determine
the proper size bit to redrill the hole, I measure the existing
hole. In this case, 1 3/4” should do it. Once I have a regular
shape to work with, I make a patch from a two sided veneer
bought from a lumber supplier. It’s very thin (1/32”) with maple on one side and mahogany on the other. I press the veneer
An irregular “rat” hole
To create a template for the patch,
a rubbing is made of the tear-outs
Rubbings are glued to the patch
material for cutting with a band saw
Patches are glued in place and the
hole is drilled to get a regular shape
