Take your Sharpie and number each stave in sequence near the top. This is so you can put it back together again in the correct order.

Using a hammer and chisel, pound off the iron hoops beginning with the middle ones. When you take off the end hoops the barrel will fall apart. Lay the staves out in numerical order. (PHOTO #001A)

Using your knife (I use an old hunting knife) scrape off the wine residue and rotten wood. If your barrel was used for whiskey, there will be a lot of charred wood that will need to come off as well. Where there were gaps between the staves, crystalline residue will need to be removed from the sides of the staves. Using your belt sander with a medium grit belt, clean up the sides of the staves. You want clean, new-looking wood to show. (PHOTO #002)

This part usually takes me three or four hours.

3. ASSEMBLING THE BARREL
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This next part is really nasty, so wear old clothes. Once you begin this, you can't stop until it's done. Having one or two people to help you will make it much easier.

Place an end hoop on the ground. (PHOTO #003) Beginning with your #1 stave, liberally glue the edges. (I use a ½" paint brush and dump my glue into a steel pot.) You want to use so much glue that it runs down and makes an unholy mess. Do the same with the #2 stave. Stick them together and put them in the hoop. (It helps if you use something to hold them upright. I use whatever is handy-- lawn chairs, bags of peat moss, etc. Having other people helping you is very nice for this part, and if you do, you can have someone hold the upper small hoop in place and fit all of the staves into it.) (PHOTO #004)

Continue gluing and sticking them together until you are down to the last one. You will find that the last one really doesn't want to fit inside the hoop. By now your hands are sticky and there's glue everywhere and you're probably a little frustrated because the thing keeps falling apart. Wedge the end of the stave in as best you can and hammer it down.

Take the second small hoop and fit it over the top. (This can be a little difficult.) Hammer it into place. If the staves aren't even at the top, pound them down into place. (PHOTO 005)

Now replace all the other hoops. The hoops are the clamps which will hold your drum body together until it dries. Use your hammer and chisel and drive them on as tightly as you can.

You will notice that the staves of the barrel aren't even and smooth on the outside. Take a large mallet or rubber hammer and pound on the staves from the inside to try to level them out and make them more even. The smoother and less ‘ridgy' the barrel is, the less wood will have to be removed to make it look good.

Glue the bung and hammer it into the bung hole. If your drum came without a bung, you'll have to make one yourself. (Bungs are usually made of pine, and will show up as a light-colored `dot' on the finished wood. If you REALLY want to carve a new one out of oak, go to it. Personally, I don't mind a light-colored dot, and sometimes I cover it with the iron fitting for the rings.)

Take your bottle of glue and `fill in' any gaps from the inside. If the gaps are large, mix some sawdust in with the glue to help keep it from flowing out of the cracks.

Take your wet rags and wipe off all the glue that has dripped and smeared on the outside of the barrel. The more you leave on the outside, the more sanding belts will be gummed up when you start the refinishing. (PHOTO 007) This process usually takes me an hour and a half.

4. TRIMMING THE DRUM
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Decide how long you want the drum to be. Generally, you want it to be longer than it is wide. Measure down from the end hoops and draw a line to mark the cut lines. Make the line as smooth and as straight as you can.(PHOTO #008)

Drill a hole above the line large enough to fit the blade from your saber saw. Set the cutting angle on your saber saw so that the edge of the drum is parallel to the ground when the drum is sitting upright. On the drums I have made, this is between five and ten degrees. Cut off the ends of the drum, making your cut as smooth and as straight as possible. (PHOTO #009)

Set the drum on one end and `eyeball' it for levelness. Use your coarse file to take off the very high parts, and then use the belt sander with a 50-grit belt to level it the rest of the way. Turn the drum over and repeat the process on the other end.

This part usually takes me about 45 minutes.

5. SANDING THE DRUM
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Now that the drum body has taken it's final size, it's time to make it smooth.

The first step is to remove all visible glue. This is a royal pain. I use my old hunting knife, along with a spoke shave and my Swiss Army knife and a plane and anything else I can to get the big chunks of glue off the wood. (Morien and Christopher have had fabulous success with a sharp wood chisel.)(PHOTO #010)

This is a long and potentially dangerous job. You must wear gloves, or you'll spend half your time digging splinters of oak out of your finger and palms. If you don't remove the gobs of glue, they will gum up the belts of your sander and cost you a lot of money. (Belts aren't cheap.)

The staves of the drum aren't level, and it's not unusual for there to be a 1/4" (or more) difference in height between the staves. All of this has to come off. Plane off as much as you can until your patience wears out and your hands are too cramped to hold a hand tool any longer.

Now it's time for the belt sander. Contrary to the manufacturer's safety rules, you will be holding the sander sideways and standing perpendicular to the grain of the drum. Begin sanding with a 50 grit belt, sweeping the sander up and down across two or three staves at a time. (If you attempt to do one stave at a time, the finished drum won't be round.)(PHOTO #011)

The more powerful your sander is, the less time this will take. Keep working your way around the drum, `eyeballing' it to check for high and low spots. Make certain to round the top edges so the rawhide won't be cut when you stretch it over the top. Once you have sheared off enough oak to satisfy yourself, begin using finer and finer belts. Wipe or sweep the wood frequently while sanding to remove the sawdust. Once the wood feels smoother than a table top, you're done.

Depending on the drum and the sander, this part takes between four and nine hours.

6. FINISHING THE DRUM
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When I made my first drum, I used an oil based stain and tinted my own varnish. After that I said the hell with it and used a `honey oak' stain in a can and a low-gloss polyurathane finish. Whatever you use, follow the directions on the can and use the steel wool between coats to keep the finish smooth. (PHOTO #012)

This will take a couple of hour's work over two or three days.

7. MAKING AND ATTACHING THE FITTINGS
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On the sides of the larger Taiko drums you will find two or four rings, each set into a decorative plate. The fittings are made by bending a piece of bar stock in two around a steel ring, and then slipping the open end through a decorative steel plate. The open end of the bar stock is then inserted through a hole drilled in the side of the drum, and the ends of the bar are hammered over like a cotter pin on the inside of the drum. The corners of the steel plate are then nailed into place with wire brads or nails with decorative heads.

(If you don't want to make the fittings yourself, you can purchase them from different Taiko web sites. Or you can pay your rent. Your choice.) (PHOTO ILLUSTRATION 013)

Decide where you want the fittings. A simple way to do this is to use a tape measure. Measure the circumference and divide by four (or two). Mark the spot with a pencil. Measure the length of the drum and find the middle point. Mark it with a pencil. You now know where the center of your fittings should be.

Using a 3/8" drill bit, drill a hole on your mark. ‘Slide' the bit from side to side until the bar stock "tang" of the fitting can slide through the hole. Slip the tang all of the way in. Spread open the bars until the ring is held snugly to the outside of the drum.

Hammer a nail into each corner of the decorative plate.

Repeat this until your fittings are all attached. Working with someone, it takes me about an hour.

(NOTE-- if the fittings are of mild steel, you will need to heat treat them to keep them from rusting. All you have to do is wipe them down with a light coat of vegetable oil and pop them into a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. Let them cool slowly, and you're done.)

8. PREPARING THE DRUM HEADS
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Set your drum body on the side of rawhide. Try to stay away from the bottom edge of the hide as much as is possible. Generally speaking, the closer you are to the top (near the spine), the better the rawhide is. Set your compass for about four inches. Draw a line around the drum to mark out the diameter of the drum plus four inches. (PHOTO #014)

Move the drum and repeat. Using your shears, tin snips, or knife, cut out the drum heads. Fill the garbage can with water (DON'T USE HOT WATER! IT WILL DISSOLVE THE RAWHIDE!) and stuff the drum heads into it, making sure they are completely submerged. Let them soak for 24 hours. If it soaks less, it won't be flexible enough. If it goes much more than a day, the hide will begin to rot and dissolve.)(PHOTO #015)

Take drumhead from the water and lay it on the ground with the good side facing up. Fold over the bottom edge of the rawhide about an inch. Drive a nail through the rawhide about halfway up the fold. (PHOTO #016)

Measure about two inches away from the first nail, fold up the rawhide and drive in a second nail. Pull out the second nail. Take the point of the first nail and force it through the second hole. Pull the nail through so that equal amounts of `head' end and `point' end are showing.

Repeat this process until you have gone all the way around the drum. The nails should lie more or less end to end. (PHOTO #017)

Put the drumhead back into the water and repeat the process with the second drumhead.

9. SKINNING THE DRUM
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This part sounds more complicated than it is. Basically, what you will be doing is making a platform that you can tie ropes to. Then you will put the jacks on the platform and put a piece of plywood on the jacks. The drum with the drumhead on it goes on the plywood. You tie the ropes to the bottom platform zig-zag them up and down around the nails in the drumhead. As you raise the jacks, the drumhead is stretched. Then you nail it in place and cut off the excess.

Take three 36" 2X4's and lay them on the ground parallel to each other. The two outside ones should be 30" apart. Take three more 36" 2x4's and lay them across the first three to make a square with twelve three inch ends sticking out. Nail the boards together.

Take a 30" X 30" piece of plywood and cover the square. Nail it down. This makes your base. (PHOTO 003)

Put your jacks on the plywood in a triangle position. (Note that in the photos that we did it with two jacks. It's a little more difficult. Make sure that the handles are facing out. Put the second piece of plywood on the jacks. Place the drum on the platform, and center it as best as you can.

Get a drumhead out of the water and lay it on top of the drum body. The edges with the nails should drape over the edge by a couple of inches. (PHOTO #019)

Take an end of your rope and tie it to one of the ends of the 2X4's that are sticking out from the platform base. Bring the rope up and loop it around a nail in the rawhide. Bring it down and loop it around another 2X4 end. continue this all the way around the drum, and don't be afraid to put tension on it. (PHOTO 020)

Begin raising the jacks until there is a firm, level, and even tension on the drum head. Use a ruler when you raise the jacks to make certain that the height is the same all the way around. If you have two people to help, this will be much easier. As you jack up the drum, the rawhide will stretch over the drum body. Keep a close eye on the rawhide for any signs of splitting or tearing, especially around the nails. Each time you raise the drum an inch, take boshi (rounded clubs 18" long and 1" in diameter) and beat on the rawhide to help stretch it. Continue jacking until you lose your nerve or the rawhide shows signs of tearing around the nails. (PHOTO 021)

The drumhead should be stretched down the side of the drum by four to eight inches, depending on the rawhide. Take your compass and set it for about 2 ½". Scribe a line with the pencil end around the circumference of the drum to mark your nail line. Make a mark on the line about every inch and a half. Drive in your tacks. (You'll use about 50 per line). (PHOTO 022)

Once you have driven in all the tacks, take your compass and scribe a line about 1 ½" from the top. Mark the line with a pencil midway between each of the lower tacks. Drive in your tacks at the marks.

Lower the jacks and take off the rope. Using your shears, trim off the rawhide edge that has the nails in it. (PHOTO 023)