May 17th, 2023
BlueHaus is introducing a new product line! I have spent the last several months developing the tools and materials to produce a special line of snare drums and tom toms.
The instruments are built using the stave style of construction. This method has its own advantages and a few distinct challenges. Among the advantages is the ability to manufacture a drum shell without having to use the special equipment typically used to build multi-ply drum shells. Stave construction demands incredible precision in cutting the pieces that constitute the shell to keep it as seamless as possible.
But this is BlueHaus, so there has to be something more, right? Absolutely.
I noticed that a lot of small shop drum makers had backgrounds in woodworking. This is a huge advantage in the materials knowledge category, but a potential liability because all trades have their traditions. And in woodworking, there are ‘rules’, but at BlueHaus, there are ‘rules’ and then there are new ‘rules’.
I always let design and function work together when developing any new product, and BlueHaus drum production is no exception. When considering the snare drum, I questioned why I didn’t see continuous horizontal wood grain in the shells I was seeing other makers produce.
Short answer in the woodworking community – Gluing end grain is fraught with danger. BlueHaus reply – I’m not afraid.
It was important to me in the design of these drums to keep the natural beauty of the wood grain.This means taking a single board, be it Mahogany, Amaranth (Purple Heart), Padauk, Walnut, or Maple and cutting it perpendicular to the grain direction with the thinnest, most precise crosscut blade in the industry. This keeps the grain as continuous as possible without breaks in the natural flow.
And gluing wood end grain simply takes patience and technique. The results speak for themselves.
