bearing edge cutting

my pinkified snare drum is the first snare i ever made. it sports a single 45 degree inner cut and it rings like hell. the snare is too resonant and has lots of attack for my taste so i decided to do some snare drum surgery tonight.

i added a round-over counter cut from the outside of the shell for more shell to head contact. my goal is to lessen the resonance and give it more oomph.

here's how i did that:

first off, this is what the edge looks like before the operation.


then i flattened a portion of the top and bottom edges, approximately 3 plies of this 10-ply shell. to evenly flatten the edges, i glued 80-grit sand paper onto a 2x2 feet MDF board. if you want to do this too, make sure that the board is bigger than your shell.


i just scrubbed the edges over the sand paper board and voila


then i prepared my DIY router table and put in a round over bit. same as the sanding board, you also have to make sure that the board is larger than the shell to get better support.


sensible routing technique says that you should rotate the shell in the same direction as the spinning bit. also, dont let shell and router bit make contact for too long by slow rotation or you'll have wood burns on the edge. the appropriate speed is hard to describe here, i wish i can take a video of it but i must use both hands to perform this procedure and there's no way for me to take a clip while im spinning the shell. make more than one pass on the edges to ensure consistency and smoothness.

here's a close up of the shell and bit in contact. no, its not spinning, the bit is stationary because im not stupid to use one hand on the shell while the other to takes a pic =)


and here is the recut edge


happy ending? not quite. since recutting the edges also made the snare beds shallow, i had to make them a tad deeper too. why? because shallow snare beds make buzzy snare drums.

its easier to make snare beds with a wood rasp but it eats too much wood too fast so i just used 80-grit sand paper.


after a few minutes, of "wax in, wax out" (think karate kid and mister miyagi) here's the result


then i rubbed vaseline lotion on the edges. im not sure what kind of black magic that is but a lot of builders recommend that method to improve the sound.

did the sound changed? yep its less resonant now but i still didnt get that oomph i wanted. change of heads? maybe. i might try double ply heads on the batter instead.

well that's that, night night