I've always wanted to give building a snare drum a shot and have decided that it was time. The drum will be made out of maple and the finished instrument will be 6 1/2" deep x 14" across and features 20 staves.

I started out with two 6' long pieces of maple and ran them through my table saw to cut the bevels to 9 degrees per side, then placed them in my cross cut sled to cut them dowm to 6.5".

After a quick sanding on the edges, I laid them out side to side and then ran two rows of painters tape across the row of staves. I flipped them over and rolled them up for a test fit. I unrolled the shell and applied Titebond 3 to the sides of each stave. I rolled them back up again and put straps around the shell to hold everything in place until the glue dried. After 24 hours, I removed the straps and scraped off any excess hardened glue.

After that, I had to build my outside cutting jig to make the shell round. You can see that I added two round pieces - these will hold the shell in place while I run a router along the tracks that I installed on top. I cut them with a jig saw and need to trim them with a router to get them to the proper size (I don't currently have a router and need to borrow one, which is why I didn't just cut the circles with a router and circle jig).

After I cut the outside and make that round, I'll be building a jig to cut the inside.

This is as far as I've gotten into this project and will add more pictures and text as I move along in this project.

EDIT: 02/27/17

My buddy loaned me his router and I was able to cut the outside of the shell, (as evidenced by the large pile of sawdust), next up is to sand the the outside and then build my inside cuttung jig to round out the inside of the shell.

Stave Snare Drum