Aroostook County man drawing attention with custom, hand-crafted drums
By Julia Bayly, BDN Staff
Posted April 14, 2013, at 9:06 a.m.
FRENCHVILLE, Maine — …Curtis Collin, a young craftsman from northern Maine.., has a passion for working with wood and a passion for music. Two years ago he combined the two with Collin Drums, a business making custom, handcrafted stave drums….
“In 2011 I wanted to build myself a snare drum, so I did,” Collin said from his basement drum-assembly workshop in Frenchville. “Then I decided to build the whole drum kit and you know, I thought it was pretty good.”
So Collin…began to produce stave-style drums, instruments made much like barrels, with individual wood strips forming the body of the drum.
In a stave drum…the strips are glued along the edges, allowing the sound to travel from the drum’s head…down each individual stave without encountering any sound dampening glue.
Maple, mahogany, birch and ash all produce different sounds, he said, and are the four most common woods he uses, though he can work with many others.
The complete kits run around $4,000, with his snare drums fetching up to $1,000.
Scott K Fish 