Weave a Basket from Used Drum Heads

Step 3 Cut the Body

Start by cutting out a big circle, trying to cut away as little of the inside of the head as possible. You will need all the material you can to work with. Once you have separated the metal rim, it is a good idea to use a marker or pen to draw out the shape of the strips. Consider this design tip before continuing:

--> If you look closely at the picture below, you can see several 1" strips separated by triangles. It occurred to me just before I was about to cut that since I am beginning with a large circle, there will be a lot of extra acrylic in between the straight strips that I want to cut. Just cutting straight lines from the circle (like the picture on the page above) would give me a lot of trouble when I wanted to insert the side pieces.

Ok. Begin cutting strips toward the center of your circle. Keep in mind that the height of the basket will end up being approximately the same as the length of these strips. The width of these strips is up to you: a good thickness is between 3/4 and 1.5 inches, depending on how big your circle is. I went with 1". Once you are done, fold the strips at a 90 degree angle to form a sort of cylinder with the round base.