As apparently the original calfskin heads were also. Gut snares on a calf reso... now that's a vintage sound! Beautiful job on the entire restoration.

Wow, tremendous job on that restoration! I really like those Stipelgold drums.

Thanks! I appreciate the nice comments. I used a citrus based stripper in order to remove the blue paint. It took forever, as the blue was really thick and stubborn. Even the darned badge was painted. I had to be extremely careful not to remove the stipel material, which is fragile. At any moment, the drum could have been reduced to a "parts drum", but fortunately that didn't happen. I finally got the blue removed and repaired a few small areas with a textured paint that matched the original stipel very well. This was followed by an application of gold leaf. The original Deluxe plating (imitation gold plating) was intact, so I just polished it with Cape Cod polishing cloths. The final touch was a gold-tinted clear lacquer over the metal parts. Amazingly, the original gut snares were in great shape.