Hemp Drums

BassDriver

Silver Member
I was thinking...

...if wood is a fibrous material and is used to make drum kits, and hemp can also be used as great source of strong fibres...could you make a drum kit out of shells made from hemp?

I heard that a snare drum has been made from hemp:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1NBW6bN7PM

and read that djembes have also been made from hemp:
http://www.waveriders.org/

...and what about heads? I know that Remo makes Fiberskyn heads (but the fibers made from Mylar)...so what about hemp to make heads?

Hemp is the most useful crop ever cultivated so it would be awesome to for something like hemp to be put to more use other than primarily rope and canvas.

I have read somewhere that 1 acre of hemp will produce as much paper as 4 acres of trees used for paper, because of its high fibre content. So less trees (that take quite some time to grow) being cut down could be a good thing.
 
Funny that you mention this...I was just thinking of alternate materials for heads besides plastic and calf...I never considered hemp. It certainly should be strong enough...but the tone? My guess is it would sound close to Kevlar, also a strong fiber, but who knows..Not too crazy about Kevlar. Very crazy about hemp though.


Here's a link to everything you need to know about natures most amazing plant:

http://www.jackherer.com/thebook/chapter-one/

At the end of each chapter is a link to the next chapter. There's 16 chapters. Truly an education.
 
There is to be no mention whatsoever of any substance that has provided humanity with food, shelter, clothing, and pain relief for many thousands of years.

Tempus makes drums from hemp, and they are known as Hempus.

I warn you though...if you play hemp drums, they are stepping stone to much harder drums which could leave you in an alley with a drumstick in your arm.
 
There is to be no mention whatsoever of any substance that has provided humanity with food, shelter, clothing, and pain relief for many thousands of years.

Tempus makes drums from hemp, and they are known as Hempus.

I warn you though...if you play hemp drums, they are stepping stone to much harder drums which could leave you in an alley with a drumstick in your arm.

And it's Crazy8s FTW! :)
 
I warn you though...if you play hemp drums, they are stepping stone to much harder drums which could leave you in an alley with a drumstick in your arm.

What do you mean?

Funny that you mention this...I was just thinking of alternate materials for heads besides plastic and calf...I never considered hemp. It certainly should be strong enough...but the tone? My guess is it would sound close to Kevlar, also a strong fiber, but who knows..Not too crazy about Kevlar. Very crazy about hemp though.


Here's a link to everything you need to know about natures most amazing plant:

http://www.jackherer.com/thebook/chapter-one/

At the end of each chapter is a link to the next chapter. There's 16 chapters. Truly an education.

Hemp is different from Weed.

Hemp is the most versatile and one of the most easiest to grow crops around. Hemp fibre is used to make ropes and for a long time was used for ship sails. Henry Ford even had a car made with a body made of a plastic made from hemp (very strong and lightweight, similar to carbon fiber) and even ran the engine on hemp oil.

Many of the uses for crude oil are filled by hemp.

It is unfortunate that the US government had made hemp (along with the weed ban) illegal. Hemp is different to weed, although they are both of the Cannabis genus, and are often of the same species, hemp is bred for fibre, oil and seeds...while the other, for its psychedelic purposes.

Many plants have great uses, how can a government just ban a certain plant like that?...It was definitely for business reasons, oil companies and cotton growers didn't want this useful plant as competition.

Why aren't poppy seeds banned? - they can be used to plant poppies to make opiates.

...and the funny thing is the US still consumes imported hemp products (from places like Canada), so basically growing hemp in the US is illegal, but consuming hemp oil (as a nutrition supplement) is strangely legal...the ban must be about big business.

...and industrial hemp has very low amounts of the psychoactive compound and the myth of hiding weed in a hemp field is pretty silly as cross-pollination will produce plants with less psychedelic properties.

There needs to be more research done to the uses of hemp, I imagine it being much more used in the near future as crude oil quickly runs out.
 
Good thoughts, BD. That YouTube was an eye-opener. Nice snare drum! If it caught on it would be heaps more environmentally friendly. Probably more economical too. I agree that it's criminal how under utilised the plant is. I expect the do-gooders figure the crops would provide cover for hemp crops with high THC content. Or they just disapprove because.
 
Probably more economical too. I agree that it's criminal how under utilised the plant is............................Or they just disapprove because.

Crushed by the might of the cotton industry.....or so goes the conspiracy theory. With an industry that size at stake, it's not economical for all.
 
Crushed by the might of the cotton industry.....or so goes the conspiracy theory. With an industry that size at stake, it's not economical for all.

Yeah, it sounds like a conspiracy theory to me - all the emotional loading of the word "drugs" has to be the main factor behind the under-utilisation of hemp. After all, hemp paper, oil, rope and drums (and furniture?) is no threat to the Cubby Station and co.
 
LOL, well you could go with a wacky conspiracy theory , (lord knows we need more of them) or do some research and come up with some facts like

"Hemp fibre is characterised by undesirable susceptibility to moisture and rot due to moulds and mildews and the like. It is also characterized by a strong, naturally-occurring odour which makes it unacceptable as a substitute for other odourless fibres. Moreover, hemp fibre in its natural spun state is susceptible to fraying and has a rough hand and feel. A need therefore remains for a hemp product which is suitably strong, soft, flexible, moisture-resistant and rot-resistant and generally suitable for substitution in applications previously focused on the cotton, paper and petroleum-fibre industries."

Nahh lets stick with blaming the mean ol cotton industry : )
 
Historically, woven heads haven't fared well against Mylar or hide. Besides Duraline's Kevlar heads (and Bear's variation of the same,) there was the Compo cloth head from the late '80s I think. The problem was that neither resonated well enough to make a usable tone, and it was especially evident on toms. Even when Bear and and Compo tried coating/sealing the fibers so they didn't breathe the air instead of vibrating from it, it wasn't a good enough solution for success.

I'm not sure if Canasonic was also a cloth-typewoven head, but those are also long gone.

So, introducing another woven head? Nah. The physics of cloth doesn't make for a sound that drummers want.

Bermuda
 
Speaker cones are being made from Hemp fibre these days. Not surprising that it started in Marin at Broun Sound. ;-) The Hemp fiber is stiffer than than pulp fibers commonly used. The thing that would make it unsuitable for a drum but works great for a speaker cone is that it has good damping characteristics. Hemp speakers have really even and solid LF response. They tend to have more damped highs (okay, no pun intended) ending up more dark in the overall scheme of things.

Perhaps a hemp reinforced film like a Fiberskyn. It would have more natural damping. Kind of the pinstripe or EC2 of fiber skin heads. Might work tuned up high without sounding so bongoish.
 
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