poika
Silver Member
Hi!
Been reading up on the forums and lurking around for some time, lots of great stuff to be found here.
Thought I'd share this thing I'm working on at the moment with anyone interested.
I have an old Ludwig Vistalite kit that was in a pretty bad condition
that I thought I'd try to bring back to life.
I figured I'd document some of the process and ended up writing a _lot_ of stuff on the matter so bear with me, it's going to take a few posts to get all the text and the pics up.
The process is not finished yet and there is some work to be done still and parts to get.
The shells have lots of scratches and marks that I might try to get rid of at some point.
The main thing is NOT to get the kit looking as new and shiny as possible but to make it sound as good as possible.
Basically meaning recutting the bearing edges on all of the shells. I'm doing some cosmetic improvements
also when absolutely necessary, but as I said the main factor is the sound.
I took quite a lot of pics also but there are no actual "before" pics this time,
since I didn't have a camera available when I started the process.
Also the picture quality isn't all that good but you should get the point.
This is not by any means meant to be a complete step-by-step guide to fixing acrylic drums,
but more like something that I did on the side. It also might be useful for someone in the same position.
There are of course lots of ways to do the work I'm doing, this is just how I'm getting it done.
I had zero experience with working on drums prior to this
but I've done quite a bit of woodworking so I had some idea of what I was getting into.
Besides, not being entirely sure what you're about to dwell into makes for a much more interesting ride..
The kit, to start out with, is a basic clear blue Ludwig Vistalite 22x14 12x8 13x9 16x16,
judging from the serial numbers it's late 70s. The original snare is not with the kit.
I've had the set for about ten years, and when it made it's way to me it was already pretty beat up.
I played on it for a few years and in 2006 I stopped
playing the drums altogether, and from there on the drums had mostly been storaged in different warehouses.
Last year I had the thought of getting back to playing
and eventually I started gathering up the pieces in order to get the set back together.
A lot of the hardware -bass drum legs for example- remains to be found but I'm getting there.
The thing that started the actual restoration process basically was the bass drum.
There was a big crack, almost all the way through,
that someone had fixed years ago using a kind of epoxy or something and the result wasn't either good or good looking.
The crack had started to open up again and I wanted to get
the kit back to a playable state.
Originally I was planning to just glue the bass drum back together and leave it at that but
as I started to break the drums down I had a proper look at the bearing edges and realised they were really nasty.
My first reaction was to just sand them a bit smoother but I soon noticed that that didn't do much good.
These drums would need a lot more work to get them back in the game.
So I got to work.
After removing all of the hardware from the shells I got to work on the bass drum first.
I removed the epoxy completely and, in order to make the gluing process easier, I cracked the shell completely open.
Which was pretty easy since it only had maybe about an inch of acrylic left at the end of the crack holding it together.
Then I applied some acrylic glue - I think it's actually referred to as a bonding material but I'll just use the word glue -
to the crack and pressed it firmly together.
Now since I'm on a pretty tight budjet I'm trying to make do with whatever I have
lying around the house to get the work done.
Hence I used clear adhesive tape to apply the pressure to the seam during the glue-up.
As you know if you ever tried to
snap a piece of clear tape in half just by pulling it apart, it is extremely resistant.
So what I did was, after applying the glue,
I attached some of the tape "behind" the crack and then, while firmly pulling it with my right
hand and really stretching the tape,
I pushed the shell towards the seam with my left hand till I saw the pieces getting together
tight enough for some of the glue to start coming out of the seam. Then I attached the tape on the other
side of the seam while continuing to pull on it hard. Did this many times over until the seam seemed sturdy enough.
Then I let it dry for as long as was stated in the manual before removing the tape. With this particular glue there
was also use of light involved to get the bond strong. Basically, when you're not really familiar
with any given material you're using, just follow the product manual as closely as possible. Can't go wrong that way.
Here is the first batch of pics, more to come soon
Been reading up on the forums and lurking around for some time, lots of great stuff to be found here.
Thought I'd share this thing I'm working on at the moment with anyone interested.
I have an old Ludwig Vistalite kit that was in a pretty bad condition
that I thought I'd try to bring back to life.
I figured I'd document some of the process and ended up writing a _lot_ of stuff on the matter so bear with me, it's going to take a few posts to get all the text and the pics up.
The process is not finished yet and there is some work to be done still and parts to get.
The shells have lots of scratches and marks that I might try to get rid of at some point.
The main thing is NOT to get the kit looking as new and shiny as possible but to make it sound as good as possible.
Basically meaning recutting the bearing edges on all of the shells. I'm doing some cosmetic improvements
also when absolutely necessary, but as I said the main factor is the sound.
I took quite a lot of pics also but there are no actual "before" pics this time,
since I didn't have a camera available when I started the process.
Also the picture quality isn't all that good but you should get the point.
This is not by any means meant to be a complete step-by-step guide to fixing acrylic drums,
but more like something that I did on the side. It also might be useful for someone in the same position.
There are of course lots of ways to do the work I'm doing, this is just how I'm getting it done.
I had zero experience with working on drums prior to this
but I've done quite a bit of woodworking so I had some idea of what I was getting into.
Besides, not being entirely sure what you're about to dwell into makes for a much more interesting ride..
The kit, to start out with, is a basic clear blue Ludwig Vistalite 22x14 12x8 13x9 16x16,
judging from the serial numbers it's late 70s. The original snare is not with the kit.
I've had the set for about ten years, and when it made it's way to me it was already pretty beat up.
I played on it for a few years and in 2006 I stopped
playing the drums altogether, and from there on the drums had mostly been storaged in different warehouses.
Last year I had the thought of getting back to playing
and eventually I started gathering up the pieces in order to get the set back together.
A lot of the hardware -bass drum legs for example- remains to be found but I'm getting there.
The thing that started the actual restoration process basically was the bass drum.
There was a big crack, almost all the way through,
that someone had fixed years ago using a kind of epoxy or something and the result wasn't either good or good looking.
The crack had started to open up again and I wanted to get
the kit back to a playable state.
Originally I was planning to just glue the bass drum back together and leave it at that but
as I started to break the drums down I had a proper look at the bearing edges and realised they were really nasty.
My first reaction was to just sand them a bit smoother but I soon noticed that that didn't do much good.
These drums would need a lot more work to get them back in the game.
So I got to work.
After removing all of the hardware from the shells I got to work on the bass drum first.
I removed the epoxy completely and, in order to make the gluing process easier, I cracked the shell completely open.
Which was pretty easy since it only had maybe about an inch of acrylic left at the end of the crack holding it together.
Then I applied some acrylic glue - I think it's actually referred to as a bonding material but I'll just use the word glue -
to the crack and pressed it firmly together.
Now since I'm on a pretty tight budjet I'm trying to make do with whatever I have
lying around the house to get the work done.
Hence I used clear adhesive tape to apply the pressure to the seam during the glue-up.
As you know if you ever tried to
snap a piece of clear tape in half just by pulling it apart, it is extremely resistant.
So what I did was, after applying the glue,
I attached some of the tape "behind" the crack and then, while firmly pulling it with my right
hand and really stretching the tape,
I pushed the shell towards the seam with my left hand till I saw the pieces getting together
tight enough for some of the glue to start coming out of the seam. Then I attached the tape on the other
side of the seam while continuing to pull on it hard. Did this many times over until the seam seemed sturdy enough.
Then I let it dry for as long as was stated in the manual before removing the tape. With this particular glue there
was also use of light involved to get the bond strong. Basically, when you're not really familiar
with any given material you're using, just follow the product manual as closely as possible. Can't go wrong that way.
Here is the first batch of pics, more to come soon
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rsz_ludwig_vistalite_001.jpg167.9 KB · Views: 3,476
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rsz_ludwig_vistalite_basarit_9.jpg241.2 KB · Views: 3,362
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rsz_ludwig_vistalite_basarit_8.jpg235.1 KB · Views: 3,382
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rsz_ludwig_vistalite_basarit_7.jpg203 KB · Views: 3,326
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rsz_ludwig_vistalite_basarit_5.jpg166.3 KB · Views: 3,344
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rsz_ludwig_vistalite_basarit_3.jpg239.8 KB · Views: 3,557
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rsz_ludwig_vistalite_basarit_2.jpg227.5 KB · Views: 3,370
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rsz_ludwig_vistalite_basarit_1.jpg225.5 KB · Views: 3,390
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rsz_ludwig_vistalite_basarit.jpg212 KB · Views: 3,389