Finishing body parts ! We're Almost Done, Folks!

Hello again. I unfortunately have been concentrating too much on the goblet bowl last weekto get back to the balance of this project. I would sand it a little, and then give it another coatof gesso, and then stand back and take a long look at that sucker. This is one LARGE drum!
One of my biggest fears was that the rim of the bowl might separate while I was working out the kinks withthe hand shaper. As it is only a half inch thick at the rim, there is less wood to make contact withthe next piece down, so the top of the rim is weaker than the rest of the bowl. Also, the weight ofthe drum could cause it to implode on itself at the rim if I wasn't careful about how I positioned thedrum body on the work surface while I scraped off the excess wood. It was important touse care when handling the bowl and not use too much force with the tools when I was scrapingnear the top of the rim.

I finished up the flanges on the stem of the goblet and cut some more circles of wood for the foot.The foot was cut so that the center hole is the same diameter from top to bottom, while the outsidediameter was increased to give it the 'fan-out' profile of a goblet. Here is a picture of the footall clamped together:

I'm just 'showing off' how many C-clamps I own! I have lots of clamps because I get a thrill out ofgluing pieces of wood together.
This next picture shows the three sections of the drum; the bowl, stem., and foot.

I have decided to make the flange section out of the same material as the rest of the drum. I do havesome concerns about how well the bottom flange will hold up under the tension of a stretched drumhead. I may decide to set in some metal reinforcing plates behind the flange to help spread out theforce that each eye-bolt will have on the wood. If I find some suitable material in the next week orso, then I will probably do that.
Here is a preview of the final 'look' of the drum:

The three sections have not been glued together yet. I think that I may use some dowel joints, especially for the foot section when I finally glue them together.
The height of the drum is a little more than in the proposed design. It is now about 27 inches high.You probably wonder how much this drum weighs. Well, so far it comes to 20 lbs. With the addition of a toe piece and the drum hardware, the final weight could be around 23 lbs.

Click here to move on to the next week... where are we? Junealready!!! I better finish this up. Or you can click here to go back to the main DRUM page.