Materials and Equipment.

If you are thinking of constructing stave drums, there is some woodworking equipment that is essential:

• a saw table for tapering (and beveling the staves).If your saw table can angle the saw blade accurately to 12-15 degrees then this is all the better, you can taper and bevel your staves in the one operation.

• A sharp hand plane for taking the corners off the drum shell. I bought a power planer (cos that's what the book suggested) and then realized it was way too easy to make a mistake. I sharpened my longest hand plane and reveled in the pleasure of using a good hand tool.

• A cabinet scraper for shaping the drum shell. A cabinet scraper is a rectangle of metal that has a burr, or hook, burnished along its edges. This creates a very fine cutting edge that can scrape ultra-thin shavings from the surface of the wood. It can also be flexed to conform to the convex shape of the drum to produce an exceptionally fine surface. The commercial stave drum builders achieve this by turning their drums on a big lathe. If, like me, you don't have one of those, get yourself a cabinet scraper and burnisher (apparently a knife-steel works for a burnisher too).

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