Completed Hank Drum Ideas

I had the opportunity to take my completed Hank Drum to the Northern California Flute Circle's Spring Flute Festival, which was held on April 26 -27, 2008 in Georgetown, CA. I left the Hank Drum at one of the flutemakers booths while I was working another booth. I came back later in the afternoon to hear tales of lot's of folks stopping by the play the drum!


One of the folks who was intrigued by the sound of the Hank Drum was flutemaker Russ Venable. Russ is an expert craftsman and he has been making Native American Style and transverse flutes for many, many years. Russ asked about the construction of the drum so I promised that I would send him the link to Dennis Havlena's site with the build instructions. (http://www.ehhs.cmich.edu/~dhavlena/for-webpage-lp-hang.htm)


Low and behold a few weeks later, Russ dropped me an email to tell me about his build of a Hank Drum. He was enthralled with the ease of construction and the beautiful tones that he was getting from his completed drum. At that point, he hadn't finished painting the drum, but since it was his first drum, he thought that a simple spray paint job with some spray paint would do just nicely. As you can see from the pictures, his drum came out fantastic. I'm painting mine this weekend with a basic spray paint job. Notice also that Russ took off the metal hooks on the blank rubber cords and fastened the ends together with a line of cord (actually, you can't see this in the pictures). Finally, I was impressed by Russ's ingenuity with the creation of a base from a piece of pipe, a pipe fitting, a piece of wood and and some rubber feet. (see photo on right)

All-in-all, a great finish to his first Hank Drum project.

Kudos to Russ!

Check out Russ's other musical creations on his website: http://www.rvflutes.com

I'd love to see other finished Hank Drums. I'll post the pictures here if you send them to me.