Gladstone Drum Shells are made by C&C Custom Drums just outside of Kansas City, MO. Our facility houses state of the art drum molds made to our specific requirements. Typically, multiple machines are required to make various ply thicknesses for a single shell size. Our molds allow us to make almost any ply thickness from a single mold, something that no other shell manufacturer can do. This allows us to experiment with different shell configurations while keeping costs down.

Our shells start with large pallets of 2 ply wood sheets. We are constantly working to make sure we build our shells with the highest quality wood. Good shells start with good wood.

Then these 2 ply sheets are cut down into smaller sections. Each piece is hand cut to the exact specification of each shell.

Pieces are then grouped together according to shell size, thickness, and configuration of the desired shell size. Once grouped, these pieces will stay together until the shell is completed.

Before the molding process can start, glue is applied to the wood sheets by hand.

The sheets are then stacked in the correct configuration and placed into the mold.

After sitting in the mold for a predetermined time and temperature, the raw shell can be removed from the mold.

Once removed from the mold, each shell is hand sanded. This removes excess glue from the molding process and gives the shell that bright new look.

Finally each shell is trimmed down to the desired depth. From here, the shells will be sent out to a drum builder or used in house on our own kits

SHELL MAKING PROCESS

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