We’re Experts On Making Pan Drums too!

Anyone doing a search for “steel drums” immediately realizes that Pan Drums, the popular drum used in Caribbean and Calypso bands, dominates the browser rankings. Even though our specialty is making drums for hazardous materials, there was an opportunity for us to share our manufacturing knowledge with the well known Pan Drum maker and musician, Mr. Cliff Alexis, a professor at Northern Illinois University. The challenge was to help Cliff increase productivity and reduce his rejections. When making a Pan Drum, the process generally involves the pounding of a used 55 gallon steel drum with various mallets. The pounded metal surface, when finely tuned, produces a complete musical scale. A drum can take up to 2 weeks to complete and after weeks of pounding and tuning, many of the drum seams often split or the metal deforms and the drum has to be discarded. Cliff asked if we could identify why this was happening. The Skolnik think-tank investigated the aspects relating to the Pan Drum process. We looked at metal thickness, seam design and metal type. We created prototype drums made with exacting detail and ultimately found that we could, indeed, manufacture a drum that significantly influenced the outcome for success. We found that steel thickness was critical and by ordering a specific and consistent metal thickness, as well as a specific seam type, the rejection rate was greatly reduced and productivity improved. We believe that because of using various drum types that were in the field, most of which were made from light gauge steel, it was these variables that needed to be controlled to improve consistent production. To this day, whenever I see Pan Drums in play, I check the seam and look for the Skolnik embossment. Even in the world of Pan Drums, Skolnik carries a great respect for quality!