Posted by Keith on November 07, 19100 at 20:02:12:
In Reply to: making steel drum posted by doug mcevoy on November 03, 19100 at 11:08:40:
Building and tuning steel drums is an art. You may be able to make a drum that looks like a pan if you are careful, but looks are decieving. To tune a pan so that it sounds anything like a modern (1970s+) steel drum requires quite a bit of knowledge and lots of practice. Each note has at least three frequencies (maybe 4 or even 5) that should be tuned. To get these in tune requires precise shaping, bubbling and reshaping of the notes. And to make things more difficult, you can get three frequencies in tune and still not have a good note due to the shape or the stresses in the steel. To get a really good sound requires proper shaping of the whole drum. If you want to try, just remember you will have to spend a lot of time before you will get one note that even sounds close - I mean A LOT of time. It is fun though, so give it a try. You want hammers that are rounded and smooth - if you had one hammer for building, I'd get a 4# "engineers" hammer - round the edges so that when you hit the drum it leaves a nice smooth round dimple, use a 1/4" dia flat punch that the edges are rounded slightly for grooving, and a 24 oz ball pien hammer that has been rounded slightly for tuning. Good Luck! :)