Making a drum hoop

[Gilmans]

Hi Everyone,

i need to make a similar drum ring like in the picture.
Its an angle ring with Leg in.

Legs 0.375”
OD 10”
Thickness 16 gauge

Any idea where to start?

Thanks,
Gilbert

 

[pontiac428]

This particular piece may have been formed slowly from angle iron on ring roller with special dies. It may be more accessible than stamping, but hard to make without wrinkling the inner rim. Most heads I've seen were stamped out of brass sheet and formed, then nickel plated, like your typical kit set. That looks like a big hand tom or something?

 

[RJSakowski]

The hoop has to stretch in two dimensions. A venerable old blacksmith named Francis Whittaker demonstrated how to bend anlgle irion into a hoop. He started bending the vertical side into the opposite curve. then when he start bending the horizontal side, the vertical curve straightend out so the angle hoop lay perfectly flat. I tried it myself and it worked well. BTW, this was all forge work with red hot iron, Distorting hot iron is a lot more forgiving than cold..

16 ga. is fairly thin though. A Hossfeld bender would make short work of it although you might need a custom die to make the tapered side. The legs would be either riveted or welded afterwards.

 

[Gilmans]

This particular piece may have been formed slowly from angle iron on ring roller with special dies. It may be more accessible than stamping, but hard to make without wrinkling the inner rim. Most heads I've seen were stamped out of brass sheet and formed, then nickel plated, like your typical kit set. That looks like a big hand tom or

an angle iron will probably have a sharp 90 from outside.
I started with a 32” flat bar and used a vise brake to make it Angle, this way i got a round outside curve.
I tried my small angle roller but it was getting wrinkled.
Maybe a big rolling machine with special dies can handle this but again this has very small legs so not sure about that.

This is for a hand drum called Riq

 

[pontiac428]

So it's like a 9" dia. tambourine- okay, that's much smaller and lighter than it seemed from the photos. If the ring forms the rim of the drum and the head stretches over, I can see why you wouldn't want any corner edges. I am thinking that forming (brake plus ring rolling) is the way it was made, and is probably the best way to proceed, but it's also a bit of a specialty more closely related to blacksmithing. I don't think the bolt studs are any issue at all, just weld or braze them on after you get the part made.

 

[Gilmans]

So it's like a 9" dia. tambourine- okay, that's much smaller and lighter than it seemed from the photos. If the ring forms the rim of the drum and the head stretches over, I can see why you wouldn't want any corner edges. I am thinking that forming (brake plus ring rolling) is the way it was made, and is probably the best way to proceed, but it's also a bit of a specialty more closely related to blacksmithing. I don't think the bolt studs are any issue at all, just weld or braze them on after you get the part made.

I’m talking with the drum maker to try to figure how he made it. He’s implying to a shop press and some sort of a die/brake. Also i wasnt able to spot any welding marks on the hoop.

Bolt studs are no big deal!
Also In Ron Covell videos he uses a shrinker to make a ring out of angle sheet metal. which i still need to try

 

[C-Bag]

Also In Ron Covell videos he uses a shrinker to make a ring out of angle sheet metal. which i still need to try

usual Lancaster shrinker/stretcher like Ron Covel uses only work up to 18ga and 18ga is pretty tough compared to say 22ga. It also leaves a lot of deep marks and I see no evidence of that on the inside flat of the hoop. I think it was done with heat and a ring roller with groove for the flat of the hoop and straightened on an arbor press. The trick with all of this is moving the metal slowly. If you are getting kinks it’s too much too fast.

 

[Nutfarmer]

Could you make it out of two parts ? Cut the flat ring and roll the other. Then weld them where the corner is.

 

[C-Bag]

This is one of those problems I keep picking at like an itch. If there was access to the vertical angle as it was being ring rolled with a grooved or split die so the horizontal leg could be slightly captured I’d use a linear stretching die on a pneumatic air hammer on the vertical as it’s going through the ring roller. I’ve just recently made and tried a linear stretcher for my pneumatic planishing hammer and it works really well. You could approximate the same action with a straight peen hammer but they are really hard to find as the most common is a cross peen hammer and that might be tough to get the correct orientation.

this is what the linear stretching die I made looks like, 4140 annealed then hardened.