Something to "Dampen" Your Spirit! I

Perhaps one of the more interesting tasks in the Hawkes Snare Drum Restoration is the skin dampener. This is the mechanism that pushes against the resenting skin to have a dampening effect to the sound. The one fitted to the drum when I purchased it was clearly not original and was somewhat poorly made, however as the mounting holes were present on the drum, and its a useful feature to have, I decided to make a replacement.

The original can be seen next to the beginnings of my remade arm above, the original is a steel tube with the various attachments badly soldered in place, and the pivots being simply bent nails! The original dampening pad, not seen here appeared to be an upholstery ornamental button from a sofa! 

My new dampener uses the original bracket, and tensioning thread so that it aligns with the pre drilled mounting holes. The arm is a piece of oak I cut to suit. The dampening pad will be newly made with suitable felt padding. 

Above the arm is shown in production, along with one of our new Japanese made chisels. To you or I they appear like mortise chisels but I'm told all of their chisels are like this! Either way, it performed wonderfully and i'm sure we'll buy more in the future!

The arm is shown fitted temporarily inside the drum, looking quite nice, I realised that the original design didn't actually allow the tensioning thread to pass through the shell at a constant 90 degrees, it pushed it at an angle as it was moved, I solved this issue by creating a second linkage in the mechanism. It now appears to work as intended and now needs the dampening pad fitting as well as a nice adjustment knob fitting to finish.  

The Carpenter