red eagle dancers drum support

[sawdustus]

Two weeks ago, my neighbor asked if I could help out the boy scout troop his son’s are in. It seems that the two boys (and he as scout leader) are involved with a scouting group outside of their troop that demonstrates and competes in competitions involving Native American dances and drum work. Currently, the 33” wide – 14” tall drum that they use either sits on a blanket on the ground or is supported by a couple of ugly sawhorses. Since one side of the drum is horse hide and the other buffalo hide, both painted with natural pigments, this tends to damage the paint and the changes and/or limits the sound quality they seek. There are 4 rope handles to hang the drum but it is heavy (about 20 pounds) and difficult to hold properly especially when 8-10 boys are pounding on it at the same time.

What he wanted was a support system that would sit on the ground, keep the drum off the ground, be strong enough to do the necessary support job, be made of red oak (the group is called the Red Eagle Dancers), have four different eagles on the support posts, be held together without metal fasteners, and be able to be taken apart and laid flat for storage.

He bought the wood, (I found red oak dowels at the BORG of all places) and we designed the base together. How it goes together should be self explanatory but here are a extras. I glued feet to the ends of the cross members since they often use the drum at encampments where there is no perfectly flat ground. The pegs through the cross members are to keep them from shifting. The dowels holding the eagles on top of the drum supports are glued into the eagles but not into the support posts. Thus they can be stored separately and not lost. The supports and cross members are cut from 2” thick stock, and the eagles from 1 by stock. The eagle dowels are ¼ and the through dowels that actually support the drum are 5/8” thick in ¾” holes. The bases pieces are 3 ½” wide by 43” long, the uprights 1 7/8 x 2 ½ x 24” long, the eagles are all about 8 x 10”
After I put a stain of ½ red oak – ½ dark walnut on all the pieces, I will give them three coats of gloss polyurethane. If it is too shiny for them, I will put on a coat of semi-gloss or satin to reduce the shine and I will not accept and remuneration for the work. It should be ready for them by the end of this week.

As usual, any comments or criticisms are greatly appreciated.

george


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[Pete_M]

George,

Sounds like a real interesting project. Might be something the local Indian tribe might want/need for their Pow-Wows. But for some reason I'm not getting the pictures. The note I get when I click on it says "Invalid attachment". Hope you can get this corrected.

Pete

[sawdustus]

Thanks Pete. Sorry about no pictures folks. Let's try it again. Here are the pictures of the drum base.

george

drum base 1.JPG drum base 2.JPG

drum base 3.JPG drum base 4.JPG