Hello everyone,
I just wanted to share some pics of an early 60's Ludwig kit that I just finished retoring. The kit is standard sizes 22, 13, 16 with a 5 x 14 snare. All of the drums are pre serial except for the rack tom which is 64. The bass drum has a red date stamp of Dec 9 1960. No date stamps were present in the rack or floor toms. The snare, rack and floor all have the red baseball bat mufflers.
When I received the kit it was in pretty bad shape except for the rack tom. The bass drum had 6 extra holes drilled into it presumably for 2 rails. There was no rail with the kit so I picked up a nickel one on ebay. The floor tom had a large crack in the wrap running horizontally below the badge. There was what looked like white paint drops on the bass and floor tom. All of the chrome was heavily pitted and the tension rods were very rusty.
The kit was completely taken apart and every chrome / nickel piece meticulously washed then polished with red rouge and Nevrdull. The tension rods were soaked for two days in Evapo Rust then washed and polished. The extra holes were filled using wooden dowels and pieces of WMP wrap taken from the bottom of the bass hoop inlays. The paint drops on the shells were removed through 2000 grit wet sanding (thought my arm was going to fall off). The shells were then polished with 4 coats of Novus 2 and two coats of Eagle One wet wax. The hoops were sanded down and repainted. The interior of the rack and floor were repainted with the correct Benjamin Moore Aqua Glow.
All in all I think it turned out pretty well. I tried to make this as period correct as I could. The only parts that aren't are the L arm for the rack (70's) and the Clubdate style spurs. Is it possible this came from the factory with these spurs?
On a side note the Ludwig head on the bass drum in the before pictures with the tape and paper towel is the same one on the front in the after photo's. I stripped all of the left over glue residue with Goo Gone, polished both sides with Novus 2 then applied the Ludwig rub on to the top.
Anyway, I have attached before photo's below. The after photo's are in the next post.
Enjoy!
Dean
