Snare sounds fabulous.

Fantastic work

Nicely done!!

Sounds great

Gorgeous build.

Great job dude.... epic

Looks and sounds great!

Wow… just such a stellar job. Bravo!

Beautiful looking drum

Gorgeous finish dude!!

Wowwwww! Now I have to build one. Thanks man for all that knowledge

Great job dude! Really enjoyed the video

Splendid build! It is pretty sounding. Congratulations.

I love the part where he admits he's a drum addict XD Love that aussie wit

Thank to share this video! ❤ Fantastic job! Greetings from Italy 🇮🇹

Dude, niiiiiice job and a great sound! 👍🏾

Great work man! Really took some dedication to put gloss finish, but the result is awesome!

Nice job.

I like that you use metric units so most ppl in the world will understand what you were doing

Nik, you really have a thing of beauty right there. Very nice build.I'm sorry that you had to re-do the finish so many times, but your end result in fantastic. Sounds really nice too. I love how you planned out the build, very very nice.

Great job, man! The snare is beautiful and sounds great. I’ve been thinking about building a snare for several years now. Your video has inspired me to actually do it. Thanks again!

Nice job! This is more of a "finish and assemble" build (done well), but I'll bet you have the skill set to someday build a shell...that would be an actual "from start to finish" build.

Excellent point to check the holes against the actual lug. I’m a professional trim carpenter and when I’m attaching cabinet handles I always do that EVERY SINGLE TIME before drilling.

Looks awesome. Wasn’t sure about the shells from there. I bought so much stuff from DFD just wasn’t sure about the shells looks fantastic. Specially all done did a good job . I had the same issue with Polly. I didn’t care for it. Left Brush strokes and ran easy.

Nice job with the description of how to build this drum. I have a few tips if you don't mind. I painted high end cars and custom bikes for 30+ years. Try getting some DA sandpaper for sanding out the dirt nibs and imperfections. I would start with 800 and then go 1200, 1500, and finally 2000. You can go 3000 if you would like. Dry sanding with the DA is the That will make polishing a bit easier. Next, polishing with an orbital or DA (Dual Action) sander takes forever. You would be better of with a sander that spins like a grinder with no extra motion. You'll want something in the 1200-1750 RPM range. Grinders usually spin in the 3500 RPM range which will melt that finish right off, so RPMs is critical!! This will work much quicker. Always make sure the rotation of the pad is spinning "Off of the edge" and not into the edge, or you'll burn the edge and quite possible rip it from your hands and fling it across the room!! Also make sure you put you hair up so it doesn't get wound up in the polisher at 1750 RPMs. Saw that once and it was a bloody mess, and I don't mean "bloody" in the european sense of the word! LOL If you go to 2000-3000 grit when sanding, you won't need a "heavy cut" type of compound. It shouldn't have and grit to it. 3M products are the most common. Any bodyshop supply store will have all of these items in stock. You're drum looks and sounds amazing, as well as your playing!! Just built my first snare as well. It's a 6.5" Stave shell that I made from Sepele (Mahogany). I'll be making a lot ,more of them now!! Enjoy and thanks again for the video!!

Hey nice work. If you want to make life easier for yourself in the future, I'd suggest you go to your local Harbor Freight and pick up a couple of foam cutting/polishing pads. They're only about $8 a pop. I picked up a couple of the 6" pads for use on a 5" random orbit sander. I use them all the time on the guitars that I build, and you can get from 2000 grit to a nice, high gloss, glassy finish in seconds! That extra half inch of pad overhanging the sander's 5" pad is really useful for getting into the cutaways on guitars without bumping the more rigid pad of the sander into the finish. I even keep an old one around for polishing my brilliant finish cymbals! If you do use it for cymbals, don't plan on using it for anything else again, it will turn that pad into a black mess!

Nice looking. You never once mentioned anything about a snare bed. I just finished another snare drum build myself. A 6.5X14” copper shell from WorldMax with black nickel hoops, tension rods & tube lugs from DFD, and a black nickel SB1 throw-off & butt plate from INDe! I also put on PureSound 20 strand Blasters, and REMO Ambassador Hazy & Coated heads!! My next build will be a 15 ply maple shell from Keller!!

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

The drum looked and sounded great at the end! i’d love to try doing something like that myself. Respect for not being discouraged and taking as much time is it to to get the finish looking right. I’m curious what made you want to go with a poly finish as opposed to like a brush or spray lacquer?

If you want to get a true black on wood, try leather dye. Idk why, but most wood stain seems to have black pigments suspended in the solution, where black leather dye is BLACK. Try it, it works!

I would use wipe on poly no streaking. Also i would do all my markings and drilling first before staining and poly. Otherwise you gotta deal with scratching your beautiful finish . ✌️

Very well explained mate, well done. Mind if I copy?

How did you determine the tension rod length you needed? I’m interested in doing my own build

Great job on getting that to look the way it does. It looks beautiful! I'm looking to do my own snare drum build and would love to use this technique. So without doing the corrective steps in the middle, first you would stain the shell, then what was the actual final step you used to polish it that worked? After you sanded you went to the polishing by hand. Sanding isn't necessary if you're not correcting dust marks and things of that nature, correct? So what I'm guessing, stain is step 1, polish with multi coats is step 2? Then drilling and mounting the hardware? Again, nice job on this drum!!!

Did you create a snare bed? I’m in the process of converting a 10” Tom to a snare and was concerned about snare beds. Some videos say it’s absolutely necessary and others say otherwise.

Did dfd do the snare beds? I didnt hear when they were done.

Bro, I think that you would have gotten a better result if you used an air brush. Just my opinion, you still have a beautiful snare drum and sounds great. I really love that finish. Great job brother

what about all the stain and glop on the bearing edges?

I really want to build a set of these but I also love my cheap little electronic set up for what I do. So torn

What was the budget for this? How much is necessary?

You never addressed making snare beds on the shell, did you find it not necessary?

I'm wanting to make a snare drum out of 2 plys of Brazilian Rosewood and center ply of Sitka Spruce. However, the price for just the wood alone would be a fortune. So... I guess my idea will stay in dream mode.😢

Maybe next time you'll spray instead of that prehistoric method. Finally turned out ok though.

bubbles.... use a small torch to get rid of those...[dont burn nuthin].

nice fat sound

Very cool. Looks and sounds fantastic. I've been wanting to restain my old Grestch Kit but I've been terrified of ruining the finish. I've never stained anything before. But maybe I can do this although I'm not sure how far I'd have to strip back the old finish and how to go about doing that.

Hi Nik. Im a drummer and a woodworker. I do tons of lathe work and have wanted to build a snare for a long time. I am wondering what sound I would get turning one out of solid wood instead of building up 5 or 6 ply. Any thoughts on this?

Spray finish sir...

Очень низко звучат обертона барабана,или ты так настроил его низко,или твой микрофон не пропускает высокие частоты,мне не понравилось! Малый Барабан должен звучать феерично, чётко,что бы были слышны все обертона,от высоких средних,и низких частот,вишня не то дерево из которого можно делать Snare Drums!!!)))