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a good friend of mine has been bugging me to finish a drum set he has and so I finially gave in Since I'm overloaded with work in my shop, I asked him to bring me one drum at a time. this first one is a tom, the smallest on the kit. originally the kit was wrapped, and he did a lot of the prep work with my guidence. maple shells, he requested a natural stain on it. personally I wanted to go with a silverburst, but he wasn't up to that idea, lol. here's some pics.

first thing I did with the shell was I hand rubbed it out a little with a 500 grit pad, then figured out how to hang it. I decided to get some wire we use in our shop to redo wire hangers on antique picture frames and twisted up the wire a bit. then I ran a piece of wire between two of the holes on the shell used for the hardware. at each end I twisted the wire off with a metal washer, and then attached another piece of wire to the inside and hung that to the garage door in my shop. here's what the shell looked like after I applied the natural stain.

here's what it looked like after wiping off the extra stain and I shoot in once with a thin coat of nitrocellulose lacquer.

after it dried a little I shoot it again with 4 more heavy coats of nitro.

this morning I checked it again and it was dry enough to rub out. So I first rubbed it out with a 1000 grit pad with water. after I got it smoothed out I switched to a 2000, then a 4000 pad, again using plenty of water.

then I got my scratch remover polish out and buffed out the shell just like if I were buffing out a guitar. I then dried it off and applied a couple coats of wax and wah-la! what you guys think? not bad for one and half days work if you ask me. next is the hoops to this tom and the next biggest tom.

I dig it, I also like the purple metal flake body in the background.

yeah thats my brother's strat project i been finishing.

the drum looks really good - surprisingly nice looking wood for a drum that was wrapped.

The drum looks great! Hey, where's my pink Strat?

What a nice challenge for you Aaron, drawing innovative ideas from the grey matter -great job too! I notice at some stage you mention the use of a lot of water. But water can be an enemy of wood, right? I was thinking of using gum spirits of turpentine instead (NOT the common household terpentine thinner!). I remember using it on a part (top) of an antique desk which someone had ruined by slapping ordinary varnish on it. I smoothed it out using gum spirits of terpentine and the finest of sandpaper. The liquid simply evaporates and leaves the sandpaper alone and the results were very pleasing...the surface looked like it had been polished centuries long