How to refinish a drum

Step 4 Remove residual glue

Now comes one of the fun parts - removing the residual glue from the drum shell. To make it easier to work on the shell, I screwed a 1x2 piece of wood to my work table to loop the drum shell on. this helps keep the drum from trying to roll away, and it also helps keep the pressure on just the area being worked on.

At first, I tried using acetone to loosen the glue. The acetone had no effect on it at all. Luckily, I had a can of Goof Off on the garage to try out. It actually loosened the glue enough for me to be able to scrape off. It took an hour to scrape the whole drum clean of the glue.

I plan to use a plastic scraper next time so I don't accidentally gouge the wood of the shell. I got lucky this time with the metal putty knife.