help! my bodhran is ill!

[Brett Williams]

You wrote: 
>
>
>> 
>>     Stop using the water bath on the inside of the head to 
>> 'restretch' the skin.  What I suspect from your list of symptoms is 
>>  that you're inadvertently removing the natural oils from the 'dead' 
>>  spot in the center of the head by wetting/drying cycles.  If you 
>>  must use water to adjust the head, use a mister-- and the absolute 
>>  minimum necessary to loosen up the head.
>
>   I've found water to be a very useful tool to control the 
>pitch/tautness of my drumhead. I've found that different heads are 
>tuned to different environments. The one I use at RPFN is perfect in 
>San Francisco. That makes it dangerously tight in Novato in the 
>summer. At Northern, I water it every hour or so to keep it from 
>getting tight to the point of damage. When I went to Idaho this 
>summer, I had to water it every 15 minutes or so and store it with 
>water in it to keep it from pulling tacks/warping. Needless to say, I 
>saddle soaped it often and rubbed lanolin into both sides of the head 
>several times a week. It's perfectly happy back in its home climate 
>after all that. 

Yes, precisely-- it's adjusted to its home environment.  You stated 
normal care and treatment for a bodhran's home environment more clearly 
than I did-- however I was under the impression that the original query 
was from someone who did not have a drum head that was well-adjusted to 
its home environment.

You confirm my point that when a bodhran head is at home, so to speak, 
adjusting the tension with water should not be standard operating 
procedure.  It was my understanding from the lady's original question 
that the skin on her drum required this treatment in order to be played 
just about every time she picked it up.  She said that she had only 
oiled the skin once and implied she'd never used saddle soap. A 
continuous application of water in these circumstances would be very 
drying on the skin. I suggested the mister to fit her circumstances.

I said:
>>     Use your non-beater hand on the skin inside the back of the drum 
>>     to adjust tension, rather than any water at all. You'll find 
>>     that you can get some pretty awesome 'scale' effects by 
>>     adjusting the head's 'note' this way.
>

Erin replied:
>   You sure can. However, you need enough slack in the head to play 
>around with to do this. 

I would think that a well-tempered bodhran would be at that precise 
point, where it will have just a wee bit of slack for tone take-up. 
(grin) I've beaten mine into exactly this kind of submission.

I said:
>> the more humid parts, remember that your skin head will suck up that 
>> extra moisture. Try to take up the slack with your non-laying hand 
>> as much as you can, instead of resorting to the water bath 
>> treatment. That should be medicine of last resort, rather than 
>> standard operating procedure.

Erin replied:
>   I've used water as SOP for years- you just have to remember that 
>you have to keep the oil and saddle soap coming as well. Water is a 
>useful tool, especially when you're not in the climate the drum is 
>accustomed to (much like the player- you drink a lot more at Southern 
>than Northern ;-)
>
>
>                                               The Black Rose
>

Uhunh.  I am now  curious as to who made the bodhran and what quailty 
skin had been stretched on its head. Could it be that the lady simply 
has an inferior quality skin on the bodhran? Perhaps it needs to be 
restretched? I am familiar with the climactic zones in Oregon, to some 
extent, and I'm curious as to the lady's travel habits with the 
bodhran, too. All of these factors combined with little to no 
replenishment of the skin's oils would contribute to the formation of 
her 'dead spot', wouldn't they?

ciorstan
(who likes the idea of an extra large rubber band between the edge of 
the newly-stretched skin and tacks to hold the drying edge down 
perfectly flat, though she hasn't had the necessity yet of doing it 
herself)