I’m making a bodhran for one of Teresa’s special needs clients. He’s into Scottish/Celtic type music, apparently. I’m only making the drum. He’ll have to source a beater (or whatever the stick thing is called) elsewhere.
I’ve made it from an old 13” rack-tom, cut around the circumference to a suitable – guestimated! – depth. Added a single cross-bar (some have none, some one or two, others have a ‘T-bar’, etc).
Our pal Ken routed a new bearing edge on the playing side (again, totally guessed at!). And today I had to sand back to natural wood after having sprayed and lacquered the raw birch black/gloss.
And then came the fraught process of gluing the goatskin head to the frame. Got in a bit of a panic over this. But I think we triumphed (Teresa helped!) in the end.
Letting the skin glue overnight. Tomorrow I’ll be hammering in shortened (if not shortened they’d go straight through the shell) furniture tacks, and cutting the excess goatskin away.
Kind of scary, having no experience in this area at all. But fun as well. Hope it turn out alright!?
