Marc’s Mini Drum Set

Viewer Project - By Marc Roux (MR Designs) from Nashville, TN
Added on March 1, 2015

Thank you for taking a look at my homemade drum set. I spent many hours creating this project. Don’t ask how many! Being a woodworker/woodturner and a drummer, I decided to challenge myself by making a mini drum set. I sketched the design on paper first, to get a better feel for scale. Once I was happy with how it looked on paper, I made all the parts. There was trial and error along the way. Some parts took 2 attempts to get it right. The hardest parts were the cymbals, by far. That took some figuring out.

The drum set consists of 609 individually made pieces, standing 14” tall on the stage. As for the wood species, I used Walnut for the drum shells and Maple for all the hardware (rims, stands, etc.). Ebony is sprinkled throughout the kit. The cymbals are made of Yellowheart and can be removed from their stands for transport. Some pieces of the drum set are Maple dyed black. The stage is all Bubinga, except the little Maple spindle in the bottom center.

The drum shells and rims are segmented. The cymbals move freely. I made the dowels for the drum hardware on the lathe. The dowels range in size from 3/8 inch down to 1/8 inch. I applied 3 coats of a water-based polyurethane finish to the entire project.

The stage diameter is 20” and is put together with 2 pretty boards of Bubinga. After starting to shape the bottom, I got the idea to make it look like an album… label and all. I let the computer help me lay out the label placement and font, which I transferred to the Bubinga with my woodburning tool. I carefully scratched tiny lines with my skew chisel to make it look like an album.

I called it “All The World’s A Stage” after the name of an album by Rush, one of my all time favorite bands.

Hope you enjoyed looking at my musically inspired wood creation, which was definitely a joy to create. If you have any questions about this piece, or would like to see my other creations, please visit my website.

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