cowhide

[Snake]

I'm ordering some cow hide from MacPherson's leather to make my conga heads. How thick is the hide used on conga drums from cows? The salesman Joe has goat skin hides that are 1/16th inch thick that he recomends but I've read on this board that cowhide is better. All of the hides that I've seen are quite a bit thicker though so I'm wondering if that's OK.

[franc]

snake
hope all is fine!!!! the best skins for congas are the''mule skins''. but is hard to find and more expensive. if you can't find mule skins go for the cowhide. in congas as in bongos, next to the mule skins i recomend cowhide. i use cowhide in my congas and bongos . goats skins are not recomended for congas or bongos they are too thins and tears easily. they are usually used for ''panderetas'' pandeiros and so on. synthetics heads are also highly recomended. my best and áche to you and all in this great forum.

[Snake]

Then cowhides it will be!! I make congas out of SDR-35 Sewer Pipe and I hope I get good results with the thick hides. I mold the bottom half of the tubes so that they converge in rolls at the base which gives the sewer pipe a wave look on the base. They resonanate extremely well and with Evans tri-heads they sustain the tone quite long. The tone is the same as Evans heads on an Oak conga except that the sound seems more active and alive on my sewer pipe instead of mellow/tribal effect on the wooden ones.

One thing I have found as a benefit is the way I do my bearing edges on drums, the results are much better on the sewer pipe than with the wood staves. Maybe the enhanced sound is more a function of the better bearing edge then the actual sewer pipe itself?

[franc]

snake, this is new for me!!SDR-35 Sewer pipe??? what kind of material is it?? how do you install the support plate for the lugs. is it strong enough to tighten the heads ??? i'm confused!! my best!!!:rock:

[Snake]

SDR-35 is the green sewer pipe. It is strong enough to use if you go with the 12 inch and larger pipe. The wall thickness for the 12 inch is 7/16" and the 15 inch is 9/16 thick. I use prepunched dexion strips on the inside of the drums for backing plate support and then a U-Bracket on the outside. I make my own rims and they are 1 3/4" oversize diameter to the outside diameter of the drums. I use turnbuckles for the tensioning mechanism which allows me to tune the drums 2 screws at a time by hand and tune opposite sides of the head at the same time.

The Evans tri head replacement for LP's fits perfectly on the 12 inch SDR-35. You have to make your own heads for the 15 inch pipe. SDR-35 comes in an 18 inch size but the wall thickness is too thick for my hardware unless I delete the dexion backing plates which I don't advise. The 18" stuff gets fairly heavy even in 30" long tubes so I don't see it as beneficial to go up to that size. Who knows though, it might make for a get drum as well.

The most critical part is how you do the bearing edges but it is amazing the quality you can achieve with a little technique. Finally, what gives the drums their sound is the way you heat mold the bases into converging waves. It gives the drums a smooth creamy sound with no harse tones but the SDR-35 gives you back all of the sound so it is more dymmanic and alive with additional volume over wooden congas. The SDR-35 is softer than fiberglass so I don't hear the overtone sound that I get when I demo glass congas.

The sewer pipe is indestructable, paintable, super easy to work with requiring minimal hand tools and it's inexpensive. I end up with about $45.00 in each drum excluding the skins. The Evans heads end up costing me more than the rest of the drum but the cow hides are looking like they will cost me $14.00 each from a wholesale leather place here or something close to that from Macpheresons in Seattle.



Edited By Snake on 1101127505

[CongaCaja]

Ok...I'll "bite" as well.

Snake, you have me very curious to see your "end product" from these pipes. Can you post a photo? Sound file?

very curious... cjk

[Snake]

I'll post some photos of both sizes of them, the 12's and 15's, as soon as I get the cow hides mounted. I need do do some research as to how to post a photo here as well. One thing I am still working on is the stands for them. I can mount 3" pvc on the inside of them and put caps on the bottoms to raise the drums 3 inches off the floor. Then if you want to raise them higher, you pull the caps off and put a 3" coupler on instead and then add another piece of 3" pipe cut to your custom playing height. Finally you put the cap back on the other end of the additional extenson piece.

It should work out well except that I need to see if I effect the acoustics any. On the congas that I have moulded with 3 wave base contours, you use 3 base extensions mounted in the rolls. For the 4 wave base drums, you use 4 but might have to step down to 2" pipe for them due to the 4 wave contours using up the available space in the base of the drums.

Perhaps if I cap the tops of the extension tubes, I won't effect the acoustics or maybe having some of the sound waves entering and exiting these tubes might give a pleasant surprise acoustically. From my initial experiments, the 4 wave base fold drums sound noticeably different from the 3 wave base fold ones. The 3 fold drums sound tighter or punchier while the 4 folds have a deeper sound and more sustain like there's more happening inside the drum body. Not sure yet if this is a function of the number of wave folds or something else since I had to send the Evans heads back due to their cost. My goal is a $50 dollar drum and the Evans heads blew my budget.


Are you all sure that it's American Cow Hide that you are using on your drums? This stuff is really thick compared to the water buffalo stuff on the LP's. I think the cow hide is close to 1/8/" thick and it just doesn't seem correct compared tho the congas in the music stores. ???

[CongaCaja]

Personally, I have Peruvian cowhide on my drums. It's is thicker than the original LP buffalo that came with my drums. How much? Sorry, but I don't have the old heads anymore for measure or comparison.

cjk



Edited By CongaCaja on 1101227113

[franc]

snake, believe cowhides are great skins. in fact, are much better than the buffalo skin, that is my experience with skins. sorry to say that i'm dying for mule skins. my best to all of you!!! like congacaja said, please see if you can post a photo of your pipes, áche!!! franc:rock:

[Snake]

I really appreciate all of the response to my question. I feel good about going and getting the cowhide now. At lunchtime today I'm going over to the leather wholesale shop by where I work and purchasing some of it and get it mounted up tonight. Should be dry enough to play by thrusday evening.

[CongaTick]

Snake,

I'm an infrequent contributor to the forum, but I read it every day. Your drum has raised my curiosity. From what I can see on this thread, there are a lot of us that are enthusiastically waiting for a picture or two to go with construction details. Don't know if the cowhide worked out, or if you're finished with the drum, but don't want to let this subject fall by the wayside.

CongaTick

[Snake]

I ran into a problem with making a ring for the cowhide. I had to get some 5/16 diameter hot rolled steel rod and now I need to get over to Harbor Freight and get a ring roller so I can get them round and flat. I also need to find a Mig welder that I can borrow so I can weld up some rings. I sold all of my welding equipment when we moved into this house so I'm at a work stoppage until Wednesday.

If you are trying to do this yourself, make sure that you only heat the plastic up to around 250 degrees. Only heat the bottom 50% of the sewer pipe since you want to preserve the top 30% as perfectly round to accomodate the hardware and have something that looks professional. REmember that the heat will migrate up the pipe from the hot end to the cool end so even if you want to form more then 50% of the tube, don't heat more than 50% of it or the top will go out of round and the only way to fix it is to start over and heat the whole thing and then set it upright. If you don't put the thing in a mold, it will return to it's original round shape. Or use wooden circles cut out to make a tight fit inside the top 30% of the tube so it holds it's round even if heated.

Also, if I buy the welder, I'll just produce my own mounting plates and use traditional threaded hooks like LP, Pearl and Timba. The turnbuckles are better functionally but they look kind of "Tim Allen - Home Improvement - overkill" and if I'm going to do this I want them to look good.

The stands that I spoke of are very functional but unfortunatly they also give the drums the look like a plumber playing out after working all day plumbing a shopping mall. The drums look much better left as just molded plastic and then set into a basket to get it off the floor 3 or 4 inches.

As soon as I get a good looking finished set of these things done I will post pictures so you can see if this is for you or if it's junkyard nonsense. I do want to put my best effort out to all to see though because when I had the Evans Synthetic heads on them, they sounded good enough to the musicians around here that they want sets for themselves. You all won't have the benefit of hearing them before you build them so I at least want to give the idea a fair shake with you by posting a well refined effort.

Snake

[CongaTick]

Thanks for the update, Snake. Not for a minute would I begin to attempt to build one. Don't think my skills are ready for it, but am fascinated with the possibilities you present. Hope you work out your welding problems. In the meantime, will be looking forward to a pix.

Thanks,

CongaTick