Re-heading

I volunteered to re-head Janet's drums. This suits my OCD personality, as well as gives me somthing to do during these long, long, cold winter evenings. Plus, it's the least I can do to repay the gift of my own drum. Anyhoo.

Re-heading consists of taking an old, worn-out taiko head off a drum, and putting a new one on. You go to the internet or the (remember these?) telephone and ask people to send you new hides and tacks to secure the hides to the drum. You also shove toothpicks into the holes left behind by the tacks you pulled out to get the old head off. That's a pain. Because I wanted to do things correctly, I sawed the toothpicks down, and then sanded them flush, and left myself with the dilemma of fixing the sanded parts of the drum with new coats of sealer and tung. Luckily, I have exhaustive (boy, do I mean, exhaustive) experience with sealer and tung. It looks something like this before the tung oil:

Oh sheesh, zoom out, it'll look more like this when I'm done:

Anyhow. That's what I'm up to. I have a hide that I will start marinating in my bathtub tomorrow (in between showering, of course), then on Sunday I get to do the first stretch. You've seen all these chronicles documented in depth already on this blog. But I like this. I wish I could quit my job and re-head drums for a living. Oh, and play taiko. And maybe make bachi.

College students are all starting to apply to college, so that leaves little free time in my life. Or rather, it leaves me with little free energy beyond processing college applications, reheading drums, and maybe stealing in a moment here and there to do stuff like brush my teeth, blog, and watch Ugly Betty. Oh, and sleep. But it's all good. The holidays are coming up, and I look forward to the free time. Gotta get there first.