Cocktail Restoration

UPDATE: Here is a pic that Mikey sent me of the drum set up. I went and played it and it's dreamy. He's using the roto-toms, bell, and remote hi-hat. The stuff behind that is another one of his kits.

Here is the Slingerland cocktail kit that I found for $30. It had heavy water damage and the wrap was pretty well destroyed, so I decided to refinish it. I spent over 40 hours working on this drum and it shows. I sold it for a goodly sum and the new owner (Mikey) is very happy with it. Once Mikey tuned it, it sounded fantastic.

That wrap had to come off, so I started peeling it very carefully with a hairdyer and a paint scraper.

Before the shell could be sanded, the old glue (and glitter from the wrap) had to be stripped off. I used a very caustic paint stripper because the glue was old and kind of embedded in the grain of the wood. I got really high off the paint stripper and had to leave the room several times. The fumes gave me a pretty ruthless headache that I knocked down with some beers.

Once the shell was clean, I sanded it for a very long time - 25 hours of the labor in this project went into the sanding. Then I stained it (very lightly) and sanded it some more. Then I started coating it with a non-VOC floor finish that I like to use because it is absolutely brilliant. This picture is after two coats of poly.

After days of drying and re-coating (five coats of poly in all) the drum looked like this:

I was extremely happy with the way this project turned out. It was hard to sell this beauty, so I sold it to a good friend who I know will love it!