As a fun little start to this follow-up post, I was able to find the catalogue where this model of timpani first appear - they're advertised as Maschinenpauken and were first put in Sonor's catalogue in 1930. We are told the size of the drums are 62cm and 68cm, while the drums sitting on my floor are smaller than that at 59 and 64. This is an odd little idiosyncrasy I would like to solve before all is said and done on this project.
But what's more relevant is that these drums were created before World War II, and the condition they've been left in for the past 30+ years makes them currently unplayable. There is a lot to do to give these drums the love they deserve.
The first thing I did was take one of them completely apart. When disassembled it became very clear that we would be battling a stiff and corrosive adversary. Rust. Luckily, none on the bowl of the drum, and not as much as there could have been considering the age of the instrument. Most of the threads on the tension rods still move smoothly, but one or two of them have bent slightly out of shape. There is no tuning key, and the crank for the hand-turned tuning mechanism is missing from one of the drums. The biggest problem, however, is that both of the counterhoops are no longer round and flat. Getting the drums to sound a true pitch with a wonky counterhoop is an impossible task, as the pressure being put on the head is not consistent around the drum - but more on that later. My first job is to get cleaning.
And I would like to start by thanking the person who discovered electrolysis rust removal. Because after hours of WD-40, steel wool and elbow grease, I was beginning to have second thoughts about how much I really wanted to play these things. But we live in the information era - and it's as easy as typing "youtube.com" into a browser window to learn a new skill these days.
To cut a short story even shorter, running an electrical current through the individual pieces in a mixture of water and sodium carbonate will remove the rust with a simple wipe of the cloth after a few hours in the tub. This has cut the amount of elbow grease required down to almost zero, and the results are fantastic.
Once all the parts have been cleaned and straightened, the next step in the process will be stripping the nickel plating from the parts where it is beginning to peel off after almost a century of life.
Keep checking in, there's a lot more work to come...
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