I think appearance plays a part but I think it is stronger and easier to make the pieces up. That would be my guess, now lets hear from the guys that do it.

I've never had any issues with cutting an edge on a stave shell. I believe they are made with the grain vertical because they glue up better/stronger. I have read that it allows the sound to travel through the shell better, but I have found that it doesn't really matter how a shell is made or what it's made of. A well made shell sounds good no matter what. I haven't seen a stave with horizontal grain unless you are talking about a segmented shell. those run horizontal.

I think the main reason you see so many nice Stave drums around is because any ____ with a decent table saw and a router can make a nice drum out of any material he/she wants to without the expensive equipment it takes to do multi-ply shells.

That is what it boils down to. LoLoLoLo

Wow! It must take a full-blown engine lathe to round off those raw shells! What size lathe are you using in your shop? How do you round off and thin the shells?

John

Most DIY'ers use a router and a KoKo jig to do it.

No expensive lathe needed. :cool:

Macr0w, do you know what happened to DrumTown?

I do not.

I just got into building drums about 4 years ago.

The only builder website I hang out on is Ghostnote.

There are a bunch of other drum websites I read.

I have read some info that was quoted from DrumTown and I have heard people talk about it but I never participated in it.

Not that I know of anyway. band3

All stave drums are built with grain running vertically, that's what makes them stave drums.

Any drum built out of blocks of wood that is built with horizontal grain is a segmented shell, not a stave shell.