Construction method

We select our wood by hand.
Some of the wood we will use for the shell is hand sawed from selected timber.
Many types of woods are suitable for building drums.
At Richter Drums, our customers‘ wishes guide the selection.
We work with maple, birch, jarrah, elm, walnut, cherry, ash, oak, eucalyptus and even pine.

After the planks have been cut and planed, we use precision tools to cut the edges on the sides of the staves.
Next, we glue the individual pieces together under pressure.

Now, we mill edges of the shell to make it flat, and cut the shell to the proper size – on both the inside and the outside.

Next, the typical Richter Drums hoops are added to the shell to reinforce it from the inside.

Made from very thin birch plywood, they add stiffness to the edges without dampening the resonance of the solid wood shell in any way.

Using this type of solid wood stave construction, we can build very thin drum shells that are up to 9 mm thick.

Now the shells are sanded and prepared for the final surface treatment.
This could mean being watered and polished or steamed and oiled for darkening.

Finally, we mill the bearing edges and cut the snare bed. In the last step, we attach the hardware and tune the drum.