Building the Pyroclastic Glow piccolo snare drum

With lots of laser drill pattern marking machine action!

I recently designed and built a piccolo (very thin) snare drum. I used all of the specialty machines and tools to build snare drums that I have been evolving for some time now. This video shows some (but not all) of the build steps and especially shows the use of the laser drill pattern marking machine, which went through three iterations of design, test, and usage to get it to where it stands today. I was very happy with how it performed on this project. This machine makes laying out all of the drill hole locations for mounting the drum hardware (lugs, vent hole grommets, snare strainers, snare butt plates, dampers if they are used) onto the shell very easy. Laying out drill patterns can be tricky because most of the hole locations are critical and must align both axially and height-wise to within 1/32nd of an inch.

I buy raw shells and do all the subsequent machining and wood crafting myself: cutting bearing edges and snare beds, sanding, drilling holes, and filling ply gaps (most shells are multi-ply wood of some kind - generally maple but exotic woods are used, too). I also apply the wraps (what gives the drum its external color and appearance) and of course do all the assembly, tensioning, and final adjustment.

Here is a video of some of this work being done on the Pyroclastic Glow (named for the wrap pattern) piccolo snare drum:

I did not show the process of cutting the bearing edges in this video because I did not film it for this drum - I will post an example of that being done on another drum separately.