Response to J.T. Massacre

[Ed. Note: J.T. Massacre left a comment on my post: "Status of the Makeover". I felt a response to him was worthy of its' own post, so here it is:]

J.T.:

I am glad to hear that you recently purchased a set of Canwoods. I hope they sound as great as mine do. Sorry to hear that like mine, your Canwoods were also "well enjoyed" by a previous owner.

I hope you managed to look at my initial post: "How many drumsets does a drummer need?", as this post in particular has pictures that show in detail the condition of the shells, especially with respect to the finish.

You mentioned you wanted to re-lacquer your drum shells. I have a simple question for you -- were you planning on re-staining your drum shells, or were your planning on keeping the original color?

If your shells are in a similar condition to mine, and you plan on keeping the original stain, I have some bad news for you.

I have been involved in several discussions with "wood experts" (i.e. carpenters, luthiers, and a number of on-line drum discussion forums), and the consensus is that the deep gouging that is apparent in my drum set will not be remedied by re-lacquering the drum. The drum will have to be sanded smooth, re-stained, and then re-lacquered.

When I said in my previous post that a drum can be re-lacquered without adversely affecting the stain is true. It is a very delicate process of using chemical strippers to remove the lacquer, then re-applying a lacquer spray, and buffing to a high-gloss shine. But this will only remove superficial scratches -- I sadly only learned this very recently.

So now I am in the situation where I have to decide if I want to venture into the world of full-blown drum-shell restoration. If these drums have to come apart one more time, I had better "do it right" this time around.

I will continue to document my work on this drumkit. You may however get some benefit from the links below:

• Join the Yahoo! group: Drumzilla's Lair. There are many posts dealing with drum restoration (many of the discussions instigated by me), who was seeking the very advice you are:
  
  
• Visit Vintagedrum.com. There are a number of links within that deal with drum restoration.
  
  
• A fellow named Big Fred built a snare from scratch. Though this project is beyond the scope of yours, he did discuss in detail, the process of staining and finishing the drum shell. He also has a large number of pretty pictures to drool at.
  

I had other web links related to drum restoration, but I just can't seem to find them right now. The links above are a good place to start though.

I of course, will be discussing the trials and tribulations of refinishing my Canwood drumkit on here.