How to Make a Homemade Snare Drum

Snare drums have a history stretching to at least medieval times, often credited as descending from the tabor drum. While techniques have developed and improved over time, you can make a simple snare drum at home using the same ideas of drum makers from ages ago. This is a great and easy project for kids on a rainy day. Here's how to do it...

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Round cardboard container, roughly 12-16 inches in diameter and 8-12 inches high
• Markers or paints for decorating
• Round material, 2 inches wider in diameter than the circumference of your box. Ideally, a leather calfskin, or mylar plastic "skin."
• Glue (regular Elmer's glue is fine)
• Leather string (bought from craft shops or online)
• Lightweight cardboard or tagboard
• Hole-puncher
• Drumsticks or Chopsticks

1. Cut the bottom out of the box, so that you have a cylinder with no center. This is your drum shell. In a real snare drum, you would want to use hard wood or steel, but cardboard is fine for our purposes.

2. Using paint or markers, decorate the sides of round box.

3. Next, get your drum skin. You can buy a good drum skin online at places like http://www.vintagedrum.com/category/Drum-Heads-Snare-Drum-Heads, or else experiment with different fabric. Calfskin is traditional, but you can also use mylar plastic.

4. Stretch the drum skin taught, and affix with a rubber band, OR tie into place, OR use a staple gun. The important part is that the skin is taught over the bottom and top surface.

5. That's your basic drum, but to make it look a bit more polished, proceed as follows with decorating.

6. 
    

   Take your tagboard, and cut out two strips that are 2 inches wide, and as long as the circumference of your round box.

7. 
    

   Using your hole puncher, lay your two strips of tagboard together, and punch holes roughly 1 inch apart in the center of your strips.

8. 
    

   Place a line of glue along the top edge of one strip, and affix it to the top of your drum, allowing the holes to protrude on top. Repeat this for the bottom of your drum, and allow to dry.

9. 
    

   Take a leather strip, roughly 3 to 4 feet wide. Knot the end of the string. Proceed to weave the string through the holes in the top of your drum down to the bottom. You will now have a nicely designed drum shell.

[xrayness]

on 6/8/2009 This is an excellent article describing "how to" make a homemade snare drum. The information that you have provided should give anyone with this as a goal the instructions that they need. Thank you for contributing a unique article to this website. Please continue to write more articles like this one.

[sonni57]

on 6/8/2009 Good details on making a snare drum I like drums but they are noisy.