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How It’s Made

Why we use expired propane tanks

At Artisan Instruments we handcraft our Singing Steel tongue drums in our workshop in British Columbia, Canada from expired propane tanks that we rescue from the landfill. Why would we do that instead of using new steel we could order from a factory? That’s a great question because it would be much easier! Here are just a few of the reasons:

The quality of the steel used for propane tanks is much higher than what is used in factory produced shells.
The thickness of the steel makes for beautiful sound quality and resonance.
We love that we are converting trash to treasure!
Each drum we make is unique and has its markings from its previous life so no two drums will ever be the same.

The video below shows the process of turning a propane tank into a beautiful piece of musical art from the initial stage up to getting it ready to paint with our durable powder coating finish.

Part 1

Processing The Tanks

Propane Tank being turned into Singing Steel Drum

Hunting For Tanks

We seek out propane tanks from our local waste management facilities. We even gift some of our amazing instruments to the workers at these facilities to show them what we are all about. Other times we get tanks donated to us.

Do You Have Gas?

Now it is time to find out how much gas is left in each of these tanks. If there is some, we use a tiger torch and hook it up to the tank, open the valve, ignite the end of the torch, and burn off what’s left inside.

Hammer Time

We then cut off the guard which surrounds the valve stem and use a large hammer (with a bit of muscle) to persuade the valve stem to thread off. Now the tanks sit outside for a minimum of 48 hours to let all the fumes exit the tanks.

Turning, Turning, Turning

Time to use a plasma cutter to remove the bell ends off of the tanks. Placing the tank on a turntable/lazy Susan like jig, the tank turns slowly as our plasma torch is held firmly in a separate jig. This setup allows the torch to move up and down as we have to cut off the top and then bottom.

Tattoo Time

We make sure to keep the bell ends paired up by engraving a unique number into the inside of each drum half.

Let’s Have A Blast

The drum halves are then sand-blasted, removing all paint and other residue from the drum shells leaving them in perfect “raw steel” form.

Looking So Buff

The shells then go for another spin while an angle grinder is used to smooth, buff and polish them.

Part 2

A Creation Is Born

Singing Steel Drum 20 Note Double Sided How its made

Slice & Dice

We experimented with many ways to cut tongues into our drums; by hand using a Dremel, a Jig saw with a metal cutting blade, a plasma cutter and guide, a water jet CNC machine, the list goes on. We now proudly use a laser cutter from Alloy Boy out of Kelowna, BC. Taking a fraction of the time, it also gives us consistent results so our customers only receive the highest quality product.

Clean Up Inside

It’s now important to smooth out the inside of the drum where leftover dross or slag is created when the laser pierces the drum shell. This is accomplished by using an angle grinder and a few different styles of discs. The inside is left oh so smooth!!

Face-to-Face and Here Is Your Number

In order to prep for the welding, we must slightly grind the “faces” or “edge” of each drum shell using an angle grinder and an abrasive disc. We then grind a bevel on the edge to create a small channel for the weld to sit in and, finally, we engrave a unique number and our watermark to the inside centre of the top shell.

A Great Reunion

Orienting the drum shells so that they are sitting on top of each other, we lay a series of tack welds around the drum to keep it together. The drum is then held, slowly turned, and the weld is completed. Our drum shells have been reunited as one and have now become a Singing Steel Drum.

Makin’ It Look Nice

In order to make things looks very nice we grind down the weld and blend the metal so that there is a flawless/seamless joint where there once was two now there is one.

Part 3

The Steel Begins to Sing Its Song

Singing Steel Drum 20 Note Double Sided Sun color (red and yellow)

Scale Selection, Time To Tune

It is time to tune the drums, so first we must decide on a musical scale. When we tune the drum we are always tuning from a higher note to a lower note. Let me explain this by saying when we begin to cut and elongate the tongues, the note begins to get lower and lower. So to reach our desired note we must slowly cut the tongues longer. This first part of the tuning process is done with a jigsaw. This has been a big process of trial and error and can be quite tedious at times.

Buff Up & Fine Tune Me

Now the drum goes back on the lath for a quick buffing to clean up any burrs that have accumulated during the cutting process. We then check the tuning and make any sort of necessary fine tuning adjustments. We leave each note a little bit high this allows us room to do a final tuning process after the paint job is completed.

Paint Job

Happy with the tuning it is time for a paint job. First we clean the drum with acetone to prep it for the paint. We then paint the drum using a powder polymer paint which is administered using an electrostatic spray gun this process is called powder coating. The drum is completely coated in powder and is then placed inside an oven which has been preheated (210 degrees Celsius). The drum remains in the oven for approximately 20 minutes at which point it is then removed and hung to cool.

Fine Tuning / Quality Control

Once the Drum is cool we take a good look to make sure there are no imperfections in the paint job and to make sure that it has a beautiful smooth finish. Next is the final tuning process which is done by hand with a hacksaw blade. We slowly cut each note down to the desired pitch.We tune the majority of our drums to a reference of 440 Hz concert pitch. Perfect pitch and perfect intonation. We chose 440 hertz so that your singing steel drum can be played with all other instruments. However in some cases if a client request we will tune our drums to whatever frequency reference they would like. A very common one is 432 Hz.

The Singing Steel Drum Is Born

Now it is time to go through one more quality check and each drum is played and looked over carefully before it is packaged and shipped to another one of our happy customers.

Artisan Instruments Singing Steel Drums are One of a Kind