# Homemade octobans



## yingmin (Mar 3, 2011)

Let me start off by saying that my drummer is as into "stuff" as I am, possibly even more. There's no such thing as too much, as long as you're actually using it. When one of his concert toms started to disintegrate, he decided to make some octobans out of acrylic. He didn't need anything for hardware except for 6" rims, because everything else he just took off of his old concert toms. Well, it turns out that acrylic is harder to work with than he expected (he's a fabricator, and works with metal all day, even has a shop in his garage), and all the shells cracked and splintered while he was assembling them. So he decided to go aluminum instead. Yesterday, he finally put it all together, and tested them out at practice. He loves it, let's see what you think.







And in motion: http://pyrrh.us/images/octodemo.mov

He'll probably add a fourth, higher one soon, and who knows where he'll go from there.


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## Soopahmahn (Mar 3, 2011)

Sorry, couldn't resist. 

Looks super cool, dude. How do they sound compared to acrylic octobans? Also, how was he trying to assemble the acrylic - he was trying to connect multiple loops to each other?


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## yingmin (Mar 3, 2011)

Soopahmahn said:


> Sorry, couldn't resist.
> 
> Looks super cool, dude. How do they sound compared to acrylic octobans? Also, how was he trying to assemble the acrylic - he was trying to connect multiple loops to each other?



He went through a local plastics place and got 6" extruded acrylic tubing. All he had to do was tell them how long he wanted each piece. But apparently, all the time in the world working with metal doesn't teach you a thing about working with acrylic, and they all cracked. I think it had something to do with the drill heating up the acrylic and warping it, or something. He only ever fully assembled one octoban with the acrylic, because the rest were too cracked to even bother, and that one cracked even more while he was playing it. That was a couple weeks ago, and I don't really remember the sound well enough to compare.


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## Soopahmahn (Mar 3, 2011)

The acrylic is brittle in its own way. The plastic probably started crazing on him. Definitely requires special techniques to work with vs. metal.


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## vansinn (Mar 9, 2011)

Looks very cool. I couldn't play the mov as I'm sitting on a Linux workstation without the proper codec  pity.. I'd have loved to hear them.

WRT working in acrylic, your friend will of course know all about metals, like drilling speed, which drill to choose for which alloys, lubrication et al..

Two things happens when working in acrylics:
It'll melt quite easily, leaving the schrapnels to cause physical tension as they get stuck in-between, and the heating will be very local, causing heat induced tension between this local area and the surrounding area.

The trick is to go really slow and develop a feel for how the material reacts. It's a weird effect, like all is fine, and suddenly you can feel it's going critical.
I don't know which drills, i.e. like the shape of the cutting tip, are adviceable to working in acrylic.

I made a cover plate for a guitar from fairly thick black acrylic, and IIRC used ordinary drills for woodwork. Metal drills has a different cutting angle which tends to rip up acrylics.
I used fairly slow drilling speed, with a sortof slow 'pulse' type of pressure, i.e. apply a wee little pressure, let rest, press again. This was enough to avoid excessive heat buildup.

For cutting, I used a foliage saw (translated, hope it's the correct term) with a fine metal blade, and went about it the same way, easy going..

Bending acrylics without cracking up can be done when the material is heated correctly. The manufacturer can tell which temperature.
Back in my skydiving days, many of us made our own goggles. I girl made hers out of acrylics, and heated it in a microwave oven. I did the same with polycarbonate. Oh yes, it works just fine 
A guy simply heated a bucket of water to exact temperature (determined by experiments) and dipped the parts prior to bendings.


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## yingmin (Mar 14, 2011)

vansinn said:


> Looks very cool. I couldn't play the mov as I'm sitting on a Linux workstation without the proper codec  pity.. I'd have loved to hear them.


Believe me, I'd love to have posted it in any other format, but my camera takes Quicktime videos, and past attempts to convert to a different format have been less than impressive.

That's good information about acrylics, and it would have been nice to have a couple months ago. As it is, though, I think he's taken to aluminum instead of acrylic anyway, to the point that he's talking about making an entire drumset out of aluminum when he can get the money together.


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## krypter (Mar 16, 2011)

That would be the most metal drumset ever.


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## yingmin (Mar 17, 2011)

krypter said:


> That would be the most metal drumset ever.



Literally way more than figuratively; he's hardly a "metal" drummer. Our newest song has a completely tongue-in-cheek blastbeat, and prior to that, he'd seriously never played an honest-to-God blastbeat. I don't think he listens to a single band that plays blastbeats. I'm trying to get him to single-foot it, but hey, baby steps.


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