Pondering Drums Again

Dorset Palaeoeskimo drums were a recurring theme for me over the past year and that theme will continue into 2015.  Chris Wolff and I plan to present our research at the Canadian Archaeology Association Conference here in the spring.

Photo Credits: Lori White

Dorset Palaeoeskimo Drums from the Canadian Arctic

Examining the drum features and
decorations under magnification

We're back home now and I'm going through notes and photos from last week's visit to the Canadian Museum of History with Chris Wolff.  We were there to view Late Dorset drums recovered from Button Point on Bylot Island off the north coast of Baffin Island, Nunavut.  The artifacts from Button Point were salvaged by Fr. Guy Mary-Rousselière, a priest in the nearby community of Pond Inlet.  The artifacts are stored in the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau and have been catalogued, displayed, and studied over the years, but there is not a lot of primary documentation accompanying them.  Its an incredible collection that would make a fantastic project for a graduate student.

The Canadian Museum of History

Some of the drum fragments 

We knew that there were two small, nearly complete drums in the collection along with hundreds of other artifacts, but we didn't realize that there would be fragments from more than a half dozen other drums as well.  In total, we recorded 13 additional drum frame fragments in addition to the two near complete drums that we were expecting.  It is possible that some of the fragments would have fit together so we can't say that we found 13 additional drums, but given the variability in the widths, thicknesses, and design details it looks like they represent at least 7 or 8 more drums than we were expecting.  Many of these fragments were identified as drum frame parts in the catalog, although we did add a few new pieces to the sample that were previously unrecognized as drums and we raised some questions about a couple of pieces that we felt may have been mis-identified as drum parts in the past.  Those questionable pieces aren't included in the photos here.

All of the wood pieces that we felt confident in calling drum parts

This drumframe may look incomplete,
 but we are confident that it has just
expanded open from a small 15cm
diameter hoop.

I was most interested in seeing the incised marks on the drum frames.  I've mentioned the sequence of tick marks carved into the frame of the most complete drum in previous blog posts, and alluded to the presence of tick marks on the other nearly complete frame.  This was my first opportunity to see those marks in person and I was thrilled to see a second complete sequence of marks on the second frame.  I'm not going to spoil our paper by telling you what the other sequence is or the surprising artifacts that we saw similar sequences appear on, but I will say that several of the other drum fragments also had similar tick marks on the frames.  Those incised lines seem to have been a common design element on Dorset drum frames and other artifacts in the Button Point collection and I think their placement and order is loaded with meaning.  When we viewed the Inuit drums in the ethnographic collection we didn't see any incised marks on the frames.

The incised lines are very easy to see.  Here are the two sets of 8 tick marks with the line running through them that transforms them into a skeletal motif, or stylized representation of a spinal column.

The reproduction beside the original.
I trimmed the handle down a bit after
seeing them side by side.

There were obvious correlations between the Dorset drums and the Inuit drums that we saw, but there were just as many distinguishing features in the drum manufacture and design that were consistent in all of the Button Point drums and drum fragments but were absent in the ethnographic drums.  I mentioned some of these design elements previously when I documented building the drum reproductions earlier this winter, but it was encouraging to see them appear so consistently across the larger sample.  Things like having the drum skin rest on a beveled, rather than square edge, do not seem to be peculiarities that are unique to one or two individual drums, but consistent features that were common to Dorset drum making more than a thousand years ago on northern Baffin Island.   Chris' experience as a drummer lent some insight to why this beveled edge might be significant and we have an experiment in mind to test the theory.  The gouged holes on the complete frames also showed up on many of the fragments, but were absent from the ethnographic drums in the collection.  We're still working on figuring out the function of those holes, but we noticed a few interesting things about their style and placement that we can report on in the publication.

All of the Inuit drums in the ethonographic collection had handles lashed to the outside of the frame.

The two Button Point drums that had their handles intact had them inserted through gouged holes in the frames.  Many of the smaller drum fragments that we saw had similar holes gouged through them, although not every gouged hole would have been suitable for a handle.  There were also additional holes on the complete frame that must have served other purposes.  We saw holes on the ethnographic drums that were used to tie the frame together or to tie the skin into place, but they didn't look the same as the holes on the Dorset drums.

All in all, it was very exciting.  I think there are some very interesting things that we will be able to say, not only about the mechanics of Dorset Palaeoeskimo drum making, but about how these drums fit within Dorset society and religion, and how they may be related to other drumming traditions in the Arctic.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast and Lori White

Studying Arctic Drums

Chris Wolff, Lori, and I spent the last couple of days viewing and documenting Arctic drums and drum parts in the Canadian Museum of History's archaeological and ethnographic collections in Gatineau.  We were primarily interested in the Late Dorset drums from Button Point on Bylot Island.  We thought there was one more-or-less complete drum and a second partial drum, but it turned out there was a lot more to the collection than that.   Both drum frames are actually complete and there were fragments of more than a half dozen other drums from the same site.  Its a much larger sample than we were expecting and the details of the drum construction and decoration are more apparent than we were hoping for.

To put the archaeologically collected drums into context, we also viewed the ethnographic Inuit drums in the Museum's collection.  They are in the same family of drum, but their construction and design differed in several key aspects.  Chris and I plan to prepare a publication on what we found.  It was a fantastic trip and I'll share a few more photos soon.  The collections staff at the CMH were tremendously helpful and accommodating in all our requests.

Photo Credits: Lori White and Tim Rast

Dorset Drums: A 1500 year old song?

Late Dorset drum reproductions from
the Canadian Arctic

I think that the Dorset Palaeoeskimo drum frames from Button Point may have the oldest pieces of written music in Canada etched into their frames.  I don't think there are any radiocarbon dates from Button Point, but stylistically the artifacts are Late Dorset, which began about 1500 years ago and lasted until the Dorset disappeared sometime between a thousand and five hundred years ago.  The Late Dorset time period is marked by a fluorescence of artwork, primarily carvings, that may have magical and religious significance.  Dorset art is often associated with shamanism, and the drums from Button Point are also believed to have been part of a shaman's tool kit.

In this video clip, I introduce the drums within the context of Dorset shamanism and demonstrate the sounds that the drums make when played:

The skeletal motif on an ivory bear

One of the most common design elements that appears in Dorset art is the incised representation of a skeleton, which archaeologists call the X-ray skeletal motif.  These skeletal motifs, sometimes reduced to an abstract representation of the spinal column, are found on naturalistic animal carvings, but also on abstract carvings and other objects.  One theory is that these carvings were religious or shamanistic in nature and some of the figures suggest that humans, most likely shamans, could even transform themselves into animals.  There are figures in Dorset art that seem to depict people transforming into animals and as a student the way the skeletal motif and this transformation was explained to me was that a shaman could enter a trance-like state, strip off their own skin down to their skeleton and then redress themselves in the skin of the animal that they want to change into.  We know by analogy with later Inuit groups and other shamanic cultures that rhythmic drumming and chanting can be used to induce a trance-like state.   Dorset drums could have filled a similar role.

The drums, a photo of the original artifact and a drawing of
the tick marks located around the edge of the frame.

On the back of the Button Point drums there are incised lines ornamenting the frame.  Some of these lines seem to represent the spinal columns seen in the x-ray skeletal motif.  The patterns of marks on each drum are different, and I don't know a lot about the design on the incomplete drum, but the more complete drum frame has a pattern of marks incised on it that I think could be interpreted musically.  There are 13 sets of tick marks incised into the drum frame.  They are spaced evenly around the circle like the numbers on a clock.  The pattern does not appear to be random, instead it appears to count up and down from the handle towards the top of the drum, where two sets of eight tick marks are carved with a central line running through them that suggests that they are also meant to represent spinal columns.

I used rabbit fur on the
willow drum stick to muffle
the clack of wood striking
wood

The pattern appears to be a mirror image on the left side and right side of the drum.  You can see the pattern of tick marks in the diagram below, but I'll walk you through it, starting at the handle which is marked with three tick marks.  If you go clockwise or counterclockwise, the next mark is a single tick mark, then a gap and two tick marks, a gap and three tick marks, a gap and four tick marks (probably), a gap and six tick marks, a gap and eight tick marks (with a spinal column) and then the pattern counts down again, eight ticks with a spinal column, six ticks, four ticks (probably), three ticks, two ticks, one tick, and then you are back at the handle.  I say "probably" on each of the sets of four tick marks because there is damage on each side of the drum in that same spot, so I'm speculating a bit about what might have originally appeared there.  On one side you can see at least three tick marks just beside the damaged area and I think the best fit with the rest of the sequence would be four tick marks, because it continues the sequence of one, two, three, four if you count up from the handle by ones, as well as the sequence of eight, six, four if you count down from the spinal columns by twos.

The sequence of incised marks on one of the Button Point Dorset drums.  The shaded areas on either side are damaged areas of the artifact, so the presence and number of ticks in each of those positions is speculative.  Although on the left hand side, you can see that at least three tick marks were carved into the frame.

I really like the look of the drum with
the transparent skin, but it requires
more preparation to get a good
sound out of it because the skin
dries and stretches unevenly.

In the context of a drum, I'm very tempted to interpret that sequence of ascending and descending numbers musically and from the point of view of a Dorset shaman's drum, I'm very tempted to interpret the count as leading from a normal state of being to a trance-like state or transformation, as indicated by the spinal columns carved at the height of the sequence.  I've tried to illustrate the sorts of things that I'm thinking in the video clip below.  I'm not sure how you could begin to read a 1500 year old piece of music, but perhaps the tick marks represent a cycle of singing or chanting that should take place over a period of time, like the cycle of prayers indicated by the beads on a rosary.  Maybe the marks are literally marking out drum beats to play a specific song.  Perhaps the ticks are marking positions on the drum that should be played in a particular sequence.

In this clip I talk about the incised marks on the drum frame and try a couple different rhythms that I think the ticks could be illustrating:

I do think the marks are a piece of written music, but I don't know if we'll ever be able to say with certainty what it is saying.  Maybe you have an idea?  Does this sequence of numbers make sense to you musically, or do you think it is marking out something completely different?  Random is not an option.  Someone placed them there intentionally and put at least some thought into their meaning.

Photo Credits:
1, 3-6: Tim Rast
2: Amazon.com

Dorset Drums Assembled

Button Point drum reproductions

The Dorset Palaeoeskimo drum reproductions are finished now, except for the drying and the drumsticks.  I'm starting to get hints of what they might sound like, but the skins are still a little too wet to know for sure and I need the right kind of drumstick to really unlock their sound.  The drums are small, but they look absolutely tiny in a lot of these pictures.  I suppose my hands are bigger than most Dorset people's would have been, but there must also be some weird perspective going on in some of these shots, because they don't seem quite this teeny-tiny in real life. Here's some more info about the real-life artifacts that these reproductions are based on.

The braided sinew cord that holds the
caribou rawhide drumskin in place
begins and ends at the handle, where
it is wrapped partway up the handle.

For the most part the frame is held together with friction and sinew cordage.  I decided to reinforce the joint between the handle and the hoop with a bit of hide glue.  I think that the original drums may have been designed for the handle to be removable for easier transport and storage, but I elected to permanently attach the handle with glue and by wrapping the lashing for the drum skin tightly around its base.  The main reason for this is that I'm concerned that the wedge shaped handle will split the wood of the frame if it is removed and re-inserted too often with too much pressure.  The original artifacts have splitting in the frame that starts from the hole for the handle and I want to permanently avoid that in these pieces, if possible.  The splitting in the original artifacts doesn't look like its enough to render the drums unplayable as the orientation of the wood grain necessary to bend the hoop means that the crack will propagate around the circumference of the drum rather than dive out towards the edge.  Still, I don't want to test that theory, because it took a long time to get to this point and I want the drums to work for many years to come.

The reproductions beside the printed pattern of the original drums.  The photo is on a 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of paper and shows two drums stacked on top of each other.  I reproduced the one in the middle.

Each drup hoop has three holes.  I'm not sure what these
two are for, but the far one (between the electrical tape and
clamp on the far side of the hoop) is for the handle to attach.
I wrapped the wood with electrical tape while I cut the holes
to minimize the risk of accidentally cracking through the
wood.

On both of the original Dorset drum artifacts there are holes in the frame opposite the drum handle.  The drum that I reproduced has two of them, one directly opposite the handle and one a few centimetres away.  At one time I was planning to use these holes to anchor the braided cord that lashes the drum skin in place, but I've decided to leave them open.  I've studied the photos of the holes more carefully and I can't see any indication that they might have had a cord or line running through them.  To me, they look more like the hole where the handle is inserted.  I made a few little wooden tabs to stick in the holes.  I have a couple theories about what those holes might be.  One idea is still that they serve as an anchor point for the line holding the skin in place, but instead of the line passing directly through the holes, it could have been attached to a small peg inserted into one of the holes.  In my reproductions, I've wrapped both ends of that line around the drum handle to better reinforce that joint, but as I've said, I suspect that the handle was actually designed to be removable.  Attaching the skin lashing to the opposite side of the drum would free up the handle, so that it could be removed for storage and or transport.  Or, perhaps the holes could be used to attach something that somehow changes the sound of the drum. Maybe a rattle or something that vibrates?  I don't know.  A third theory  (the one that I'm leaning towards at the moment) would be that something symbolic, perhaps a carving, could be attached to the drum.  Inuit drums were often part of the Shaman's toolkit and the Dorset drums have been interpreted similarly.  My hunch is based on other people's unpublished research, so that's all I'll say at the moment.  I might come back to it when their paper comes out.

Despite the size, they sound very
similar to large Inuit drums, but with
the volume turned way down.

I'll talk more about what the drums sound like in another blog post and hopefully have a short video clip, but my first impression is that they sound more like Inuit Drums that I was expecting.  The smaller size doesn't seem to affect the quality of the boom, but it does affect the volume.  Inuit drums are designed to be played by striking the frame with a drum stick.  The problem I'm having right now is that the "boom" from the drum is so quiet that the "clack" of the stick on the frame drowns it out.  I can get a good sound by tapping the frame with my fingertip, but so far, when I use a stick all I hear is the clack of stick on wood.  My plan is to wrap the stick in the softest fur I can find to muffle the sound of the stick/frame contact so that the low "boom" from the drum skin is audible.

Another view of those extra holes.  The drum on the floor
in the background has small pegs inserted into the holes.

If I can get that far, I'll be happy.  The archaeologist who I am making one of the drums for is a musician and a drummer.  I know what I'd like to be able to play on the drums, but maybe the more realistic goal is to get the instruments to the point where someone who actually knows how to play can start experimenting.  The results so far haven't been exactly what I was expecting.  I wasn't expecting the boom of the drum to sound as much like the much bigger Inuit drums as they do.  But they are just so small and delicate, that I don't think they could have been played as vigorously or loudly as the later Inuit drums.  You'd be able to hear them in a small skin tent, but I don't think the sound would carry outdoors.  Its a drum for small places and few people to hear.

I like the pattern that is visible on the drum skin on the one in back.  For reference, the hoops are about 7 inches in diameter.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Continuing the Dorset Drums

This groove runs all the way
around the drum and will be
used to tie down the caribou
rawhide drum skin.

I continued to work on the Dorset Palaeoeskimo drum frames today.  I've cut the hoops to length, incised the groove to fasten the skin down, and finished the scarf joint to tie the hoop together.   There were two drums found at the Button Point site off the north end of Baffin Island and I'm using the more complete of the two for my model for these reproductions.   The incomplete drum is missing about a fifth of the hoop and the handle is partially broken.  It has a slightly lighter frame than the one I'm reproducing and the details of the scarf joint are less obvious.

The scarfed ends with the incised
grooves for tying the hoop closed
with sinew

The scarf joint that I'm using as the reference has about 5 cm of overlap and three very well defined lashing grooves.  Once I bent the split willow shoot to a complete 360 degree circle a little bit smaller than the intended drum diameter I cut the wood to the correct length, which in this case was about 24" or 61 cm as measured along the outside circumference.  I cut and shaped the top and bottom edges of the rim, to give it a peaked top edge and square bottom edge and then incised the groove around the entire outside of the hoop.  I carved the wedge shaped scarf area on each end and cut the three opposing lashing channels.

When they went into the pot they
were still pretty tight circles, but after
a few minutes of heat they expanded
again.

At this point I boiled the drums again to cinch the hoop closed and ready them for the sinew lashing.  The wood became flexible again and the hoops started to expand in the water, which made matching up the scarf joint tricky.  I wound up wrapping the whole hoop around a pot lid again and using clothespins to temporarily hold it in place before lashing the hoop closed with wire and pinching the join tight with clamps.  The wood at the scarf joint is necessarily thinner than the rest of the drum frame so the wood wanted to bend more there than elsewhere, creating a bit of a sharp angle in the hoop.  The hoop became shaped more like a fat egg, with the little end at the joint, than the perfect circle that I was trying for.    That bugged me a little until I compared the reproduction to the photo of the original artifact and noticed that it has the same shape.  Evidently, the Dorset drum maker had the same problem that I had, which made me feel better.  The only thing better than intentionally making a matching reproduction is accidentally making a matching reproduction because you happen upon the same design and construction challenges as the original maker.

The photo on the left shows two drums stacked on top of each other.  The one in the middle, with the long handle pointing down and to the left is the one that I'm trying to match.  The scarf joint connecting the two ends of the hoop is in the 3 o'clock position and you can see how the drum hoop bends sharply at this point.  The reproduction on the right is oriented the same way, the clamps running out of the frame on the right are pinching the scarf joint together.  You can see how it also bent sharply where the thin ends of the wood overlap each other.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Bending the Dorset Drum Frames

A mostly bent frame and the
original drum patterns printed
underneath it.

I hope my dislike for bending wood comes across clearly in this blog.  I'm really bad at it.  You might have wondered why I've been so quiet about that Dorset drum project that I started a few weeks back.  Well, its because I've been having a terrible time making progress with bending the wood frame. When I talk about things going poorly in the workshop its usually after I've made some sort of forward progress and have a few learned lessons to report.  While things are actually going badly, I focus on other things. Like tropical fish or snowshoeing.  Mercifully, I've finally made some headway with the frames and I should be able to finish them up fairly quickly and get this blog back on track.

Heat and then slowly
bend over my knee

I was hoping that bending green willow shoots would be so easy that I wouldn't have to pay attention to things like wood grain and growth rings and the cross-section of the wood.  But I was wrong.  After a bunch of trial and error, I finally worked out a system for bending the small drum hoops that gives me a good match for the size, shape, cross-section, and diameter of the original Dorset artifacts.  I'm still not certain that the Dorset drums found at Button Point were willow, but the willow is creating a good match so far.

I bend it to 180 degrees or so in one
session, soak the wood in snow or
water and then finish bending it to
270 degrees.

The best results came from very straight and fairly thick shoots, an inch or more in diameter at the base.  I split them down the middle and planed the centre of the shoots flat.  I removed just enough thickness from the inside of the shoots to remove the pith canal.  On the outside of the shoots, I removed the bark and tried to flatten the wood somewhat.  The trick with the outside of the shoot is to treat it like you are making a bow and avoid violating growth rings.  As you bend the wood the tension grows on the outside of the bend and the lamination between growth rings will want to crack and come apart.

If you look at the cross section through the original drum hoops, they are shaped kind of like a tall skinny salt box house - with a flat bottom and a peak on top. But like a saltbox, the peak has a long edge and a short edge.  The long edge is a long bevel inside the edge of the drum frame on the "top", where the skin is stretched.   I'm not sure whether the hoop was shaped to this cross section before or after bending, but right now my hunch is that it was a bit of both.  I'm finding it easier to bend thicker wood if I carve a long bevel on the top and bottom of the inside face.  I think I'll end up bending it with a top and bottom bevel and then planing off the bottom bevel to create the square edge on the bottom of the drum.   The inner bevels also seem to help avoid some of the compression folds or pinches that want to form on the inside of the curve as you bend the wood.  There are a couple compression folds in the original artifacts, so I'm not too worried about a few showing up in the reproductions, but I don't want them to become so acute that they harm the integrity of the drum.  These instruments are meant to be played.

The heat gun is clamped in a vice.
Its a little simpler and less prone to
scorching than an open flame or
hotplate

To actually bend the wood, I'm using a combination of dry heat and steam-bending and boiling.  I suspect that if I had a pot big enough to boil the whole stick then I could just boil the wood and bend it around some sort of jig or frame in one go.  But I don't, so I'm using dry heat from a heat gun to incrementally bend the wood to at least 270 degrees, at which point the hoop will fit into a pot that I can boil on the stove and finish bending with boiling.  I found that it was safer to only apply heat from the heat gun to the inside of the bend as I went along.  The heat gun is strong enough to heat all the way through the wood to the outside surface, but if I applied the heat directly to the outside of the bend this outside surface would dry out and become prone to cracks and delamination.  Its a bit of an ordeal, but the occasional scorching from the dry heat is helping antique and harden the wood as I go, so I don't mind as long as its working. I had lots of trouble with this, but I have a system going now that seems to work.

The fish shaped hoop is done with
dry heat for now.  I'll boil it and clamp
it like the one clothes-pinned to the
pot lid.

I had tried boiling sections of the wood outside, but it is so cold here now that the part of the stick outside the pot would freeze and want to crack while I was bending the part inside the pot.   The willow also stays very flexible when only wet heat is used and wants to straighten itself out again, which makes clamping vital.  On the other hand, using dry heat the wood stays bent a little better as the moisture in the green wood is driven out and the new shape is locked into the wood. So far these frames seem to be holding up.  I have them bent a little smaller than they need to be to allow for some springback when the clamps come off.  The next steps will be working on the scarf joint to connect both ends of the hoop to each other and the groove that runs around the outside circumference of the hoop for the lashing to hold the skin on.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Looking for willow shoots

Collecting sticks

I've collected the wood for a first attempt at the Dorset drums from Bylot Island.  I don't know what sort of wood was used for the original drums, but arctic willow is the only option if the drums were constructed from locally available materials.  Willow grows throughout the arctic as a low lying shrub that sprawls along the ground.  Occasionally, in very sheltered locations with the right sort of micro climate, you will find willows growing vertically up to a metre high.  Given the dimensions of the Dorset drums, I believe they could have been constructed from one of these tall willows growing in a protected location.  Here in St. John's, I found some nice straight willow shoots that I think will work for the drum.

We took the clipboard on the willow
 hunt, because it makes you look
official when you are wandering
 around pruning trees.

At least I think they're willow.  The willow species that are native to Newfoundland grow low along the ground like arctic willow and a lot of them are endangered or not found near St. John's.  I need to go with an introduced species of willow.  I found what I think is a windblown willow tree with lots of nice straight shoots to choose from, but I'm not 100% certain that I got the identification right.  The twigs and buds look like willow to me, but I'm not expert.  I used an online twig identification key and it told me they were some sort of willow as well, so I'm satisified enough to proceed with the bending and shaping.

Arctic Willow on Baffin Island

Next up - bending the sticks.

Photo Credits:
1,2: Lori White
3,4: Tim Rast

Planning Dorset Drums

The Dorset Drums from Button Point

I'm starting work on a couple Dorset Palaeoeskimo drums based on artifacts found on Bylot Island off the north end of Baffin Island, Nunavut.  The original artifacts were found by Father Guy Mary-Rousselière at the Button Point site and are stored now in the Canadian Museum of Civilization History in Gatineau.  The drums are small, with a diameter between 17 and 20 cm and with 10 cm long handles that are the size of a pencil.  They're each about the size of a ping-pong paddle.  I don't know what wood the drums are made from, but unless they were made from driftwood, then willow is the only option in that part of the arctic.  I intend to use willow for the reproductions.  In a general sense they are similar to Inuit drums, but they differ in scale and several details, which I'll discuss in future posts.  I intend to use reindeer/caribou rawhide for the drum skin and sinew for the lashing.  I'm curious to see what the finished drums will sound like.  The Dorset are well known for their artistic carvings, so it'll be interesting to learn a little more about the sound of their music.

The printed photos show two drums.  In the lower image the two drums are laying on top of each other, while in the top image one drum is shown on its own (you can recognize it by it's short handle).  For a sense of scale, these images are printed at 1:1 scale and the sheets of paper are letter sized 8 1/2 x 11" pages.  The sheets are sitting on a roll of reindeer skin that will be the drum skin.

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Inuit Drum Props

A drum and five drum sticks

A week and a half ago, I had an unexpected request for five large, and relatively inexpensive Inuit style reproduction drums to be use as props for filming in Iqaluit. The client needed them very quickly.  I generally require 6 weeks of turn around time between an order coming in and delivery of the completed reproductions.  There is usually a fair bit of time required to source materials and then trial and error time as I construct the pieces and antique them to the clients requirements.  There are often days of drying time, which can turn into weeks in the damp St. John's springtime.  But this job needed to be done in 7-10 days.

Five prop drums.  You can't really fake this kind of drum, so they are made more-or-less traditionally, but with oversized dimensions and using some non-traditional materials.

I thought I might be able to
get a four foot diameter with
 an extra large fringe on the
 canvas.  But it added too
much weight and didn't look
 right, so I trimmed off the
excess fringe.

The original request was for very large 4 foot diameter drums that would show up in long distance shots.  We eventually settled on something more manageable, but still quite large.  In the end, the drum frames are about 32" across.  Measured across the fringe of the canvas drum skin they are 40" across, which is well over 3 feet in diameter.  Inuit drums are played by striking the frame and the drum is rolled back and forth as they are played.  The large size of the drums and the style of play puts a lot of strain on the frame and especially on the lashed and glued joint where the handle is attached.  I added a couple wood screws under the lashing to help secure the handle in place.  They are intended to be props which will be visible from a long distance rather than close up, but I still want them to be able to be functional and sturdy enough to survive the rigours of playing and filming.

The laminate hoop, before
cutting the individual frames.

Aside from the large diameter, the other modification that I made to the traditional drum construction was to build the hoop out of laminated layers of oak veneer, rather than bend a single piece of solid wood for each frame.  The main reason for that decision was to avoid steam or heat bending wood, because I always run into problems with that and I don't have the space or materials to bend and clamp five individual hoops at one time.  I would have had to bend them one at a time and I was worried that would eat up too many hours and days from the brief construction window.  Instead I made one large cylinder out of sheets of veneer glued together and then cut out five large rings when that had dried.  In essence, the hoops are made out of slices of a plywood tube.

Laying out the canvas to cut
 the drum skins.

This method of manufacture came with its own problems.  It was hard to get a perfect tight bond between all the layers of veneer, so there was lots of touch up work with glue and sawdust filler to create a solid hoop.  The veneer sheets and glue were a little more expensive than equivalent strips of solid wood, and I don't know what to expect their lifespan to be on such large drums, especially if they are played vigorously    However, the laminating technique did serve its purpose of removing the need to bend wood and at the end of the day they I think they turned out to fine looking prop drums.

They don't look too bad up close,
 either, I guess

The handles and drum sticks are simple dowels. Again, they don't require a lot of exact detail to look right on film.  The only modifications were lashing grooves cut into the drum handles and canvas and hemp cord wraps on the drumsticks.  It feels a little strange to make reproductions with so many material substitutions, but I had to keep reminding myself that these were functional props that needed to look good from a distance.  They aren't the usual sort of reproductions that I make that are held in someone's hand and need to  look authentic from a few inches away.

The five drums needed to match each other as well.  As I understand it, designs will be painted on to them as part of the filming.

They're in Canada Post's hands now.

I tested them all, and when the canvas is damp they have a rich deep "boooom, boooom" sound.  They should serve their purpose and are en route to Iqaluit by way of Ottawa.  It was an interesting job to be part of and if I get any set photos or more information from the filming I'll post some updates.  I'm anxious to hear how they hold up.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast