Fitting the Head

Having cleaned the Tension hoop, Vellum and tone ring as best I could without wanting to damage the vellum with chemicals I fitted the new brackets. Having the metal work knowledge of someone who's spent thirty minutes with Youtube and Google my new brackets aren't perfect but should make it easier to fit the head into the stock than the original bent and mismatched ones.

Attaching them to the head was a bit of a challenge as there's nothing to stop the brackets turning with the bolt. Eventually I settled on holding the head vertically so it was almost hanging by the bracket which I held still with an adjustable wrench as I tightened it with a 6mm socket nut driver. Some of them took a little manipulation to get as straight as I wanted, mostly because the tone hoop wasn't flat having previously been overtightened and partially because the handcut threads in the brackets probably weren't spot on.

The head was a tight fit and after a bit of thought I figured the easiest way to fit it without damaging the pot or vellum was to put a piece of wood over the brackets then with press that against my chest and pull the pot towards me. Given the rounded shape of the pot and the metal stud I'm pretty sure something would've broken if I'd just tried to push the head down into the pot. Once the head was more or less in I used my thumbs to press it home. In hindsight a dot of petroleum jelly on the brackets as a lubricant might've made things easier.

After a little googling about drilling guide holes I discovered the 'self tapping' screws I'd bought were actually self drilling screws (common labelling mistake apparently) so didn't need holes drilling. However after trying to get the first one straight without the slotted head screwdriver slipping out I decided to drill some 0.8mm guide holes slightly shallower than the the screw length to help get them started.