Ah, Sandpaper

Last night I started on the sanding of the new drum body. I began with 60 grit sandpaper and a whole lot of optimism, gumption, and elbow grease. I have no power tools for this part of the process, and I have no problem doing the hard work. It builds, uh, character, and might I add, muscle. It also builds a fine layer of dust on everything in the office, but the things we do for art, eh? My first hurdle of this process are the stains that came with the drum:
Those stains are deep and stubborn. I did some exploratory sanding to see how deep they went, but my fear was that no amount of sanding would get them out, and after about half an hour of gumption and elbow grease, I decided that sanding wasn't going to do the trick. Not that I have a problem with all the hard work that intense sanding would require, but that the stains are too deep, and applying all that elbow grease just makes for a pocked drum body. So I did some research on the good old internet and discovered that wood like oak (which is what my drum body is made of) contains a lot of tannin. Tannin reacts with iron, so when iron comes in contact with the tannin of the oak, it creates a chemical reaction, causing those unsightly black marks. Water contains trace amounts of iron, and I'm assuming that those metal hoops that were once part of the body contained iron, hence, my mottled drum body. Since chemistry created these unsightly blemishes, I decided that I was A-ok with chemistry uncreating those marks, and so went in search of oxalic acid, which is a sort of wood bleach. The benefit of using oxalic acid (or so the internet tells me) is that it doesn't mess with the grain of the wood, and it doesn't discolor the wood after you apply it. I went to a couple of large do-it-yourself-it stores today in search of oxalic acid, but to no avail. I had to resort to purchasing the stuff on the internet, which for this project, it not what I want to be doing. Oh well. Got a lot of sanding to do while I wait for the stuff to ship.

Oh boy I don't even want to think of what's next. The staves were neatly numbered and as of tonight I'm on stave 14, which is half-way around since my drum has 28 staves. Once I finish getting around the drum on 60 grit, there is 150 and 220 grit. I am wearing down the skin on my fingertips and chafing pink spots into the bony parts of my hands. If you'd like me to commit the perfect crime, give me a ring in a week or so--I won't have fingerprints. When I was in junior high, my dad paid me 50 bucks to refinish all the cabinets in a kitchen we were working on. It was a total steal for him, but, as I'm discovering, a deeply rewarding process for me, since now I have absolutely no fear of finishing wood. As I was reading Janet's notes, she said she used tung oil on her drums. I'd like my drum to look like her drums so that it blends in with the rest of them for performance or whatnot, but I have no experience with tung oil. I'd read about people using tung oil on their chekeres, but I was a little hesitant to use the stuff (I still haven't quite completed mine yet. Not quite happy with the beading yet. Should finish it one of these days. Bad me, bad). But tung oil isn't that scary. Not scary as the prospect of actually skinning the drum. I guess the next stage of the adventure is purchasing skins and tacks and pulling that stretching rack out of the closet. One thing at a time though. Gotta see if the acid does the trick on those stains.

Until then, working on my character.