How to Make a Taiko “Kan” (On the Cheap)

--Photo by vicki moore

If you have a finished and painted taiko base it's tempting to go straight to adding the drum heads. But there’s one important step you have to do before that- adding the “kan”. Kan is the Japanese name for the handles on nagado-drums. These need to be bolted in place from the inside of the drum, so this step has to be done before the skins are added.

These handles are used to carry the drums, but they also serve a decorative purpose so it’s good idea to think of a design. You can buy these in a taiko store, but if you want to be adventurous give a shot at making one.

The kan consists of two parts: a metal base and a ring. The ring is the actual handle that you hold, and the base has a loop or hook on it for the ring to be attached to. If you have metal-working experience, molding your own kan is the best way to go. But for the most of us who don’t, there’s an easy and cheap alternative.

Here's what you need:

-two bolts with a loop or hook on them
-a nut and two washers for each bolt
-a piece of sheet-metal
-a piece of plywood
-two metal rings



All these you can find at a DIY or hardware store. You may even be able to find a looped bolt with a ring already pre-attached to it (something like the one in the picture below). The picture is a bad example though! The ring needs to be big enough for your hand, and the bolt needs to be much, much longer! The threaded part of the bolt should be long enough to go through the wall of the taiko, and still have about 5-10cm left over.

If you do find a bolt with a ring already attached to it, you can skip the first two steps. So making a cheap kan, here it is:

1. Cut open the loop on the bolt. You can do this using a grinder with a metal-cutting disc. Make sure you wear face and body protection when you do this, as lots of sparks will fly.

2. Place the ring in the loop, and bend the loop back to re-close the gap. You can place the loop on the ground and use your body weight to bend it. Or you can use a hammer.

3. The sheet-metal will be used to make the base. Kan bases are often shaped of chrysanthemum flowers or polygonal shapes, but it’s entirely up to you how you want to make it look. The kan are a distinguishing part of a taiko drum so it’s a good place to exert your creativity.

You’ll need two kan, so after you’ve decided on a shape, draw them on the sheet-metal using a pencil, and cut them out. Use metal-cutting scissors to do this.

4. The metal cut outs are probably a little flimsy-looking, so you may want to give them some bulk. To do this you can simply draw and cut out the same shapes from a piece of plywood, and put the plywood and metal shapes together. The thickness of the plywood should give your kan a little more bulk. If you make your metal shape slightly bigger than their plywood counterparts, you can wrap the metal over the edges to hide the plywood edges from view.

5. Drill a hole through the center of the kan shapes that you cut out. The hole should be the same width as the bolt. Using the same-sized drill bit, also make two holes in the taiko base where you want your kan to be positioned. Generally the kan are on opposite sides of each other, but you can place them closer together if that makes it easier to carry the taiko.

6. You should now have holes going through your taiko as well as your kan bases. You can now go ahead and bolt the kan bases into the taiko. Make sure there's a washer between the loop on the bolt and the kan base. There should also be another washer on the inside between the wall of the drum and the nut.

Bolt the kan in place as hard as you possibly can because once the taiko is skinned you won’t have a chance to tighten it again. It’s best to have two people for this. From the inside of the drum, one person can hold the nut in place with a wrench while the second person tightens the bolt from the outside with a bar.

7. Once you can’t get the bolt in any tighter, you want to crush the bolt threads that are nearest to the nut. You can do this with the end of a screwdriver. This is done in order to prevent the nut from coming loose on the inside. If you smash the threads on a screw, a nut can’t get past them.

8. Next, secure the metal and plywood shapes into place by screwing them into the taiko at several different points. If you screw them in hard enough, there should be no visible space between the surface of the drum and the underside of the kan. Because you’re screwing the metal and plywood pieces together in this step, it’s not really necessary to stick them together with glue or nails in a previous step.

9. You’re done! The kan should not be securely in place. Try lifting up the drum with the kan- handling the taiko base is going to be much easier from here on out.

Note 1: Kan are often black or silver in color, and may even have some gold on them. If you’re not happy with the color of your sheet-metal kan, then you can color it with metal paint. Make sure the paint is completely dry before you bolt them in.

Note 2: You can leave out the steps involving plywood if you're ok with a thin kan. The picture at the very top shows a thin kan and it doesn't look bad at all.

Note 3: These are the bare bones instructions. You can obviously add other pieces of metal and color to make it look more decorative.

Amelia Vidal

Amelia Vidal is an animation artist from Argentina, and she's been kind enough to post some of her drawings on her blog.

Simplicity is a tough thing to nail, and it takes some serious talent to make something simple and meaningful- and I think that's exactly what Amelia Vidal does with her drawings. There's nothing flashy about her drawings yet each one is able to tell some sort of story. Her minimal use of lines to do that is impressive.

I love what she does with the facial expression and positioning of her figures- as well as the costumes she gives each one of them. It helps gives you some understanding of her characters- all while keeping it fun and simple.

I think anyone with even a remote interest in drawing can learn a lot from her work. Check out her other drawings. There's more to see!

Images posted with permission from Amelia Vidal.

How to Make a Hollowed Taiko Base (Part 4): Hollowing

--Photo by Alec Dy-Liacco

Now that the mind-boggling measurement step is over, you can finally hollow out the log. Again, don’t do this step unless you are experienced with chainsaws (please read why you shouldn't in the previous post).

Hollowing with a Chainsaw

Basically, in this step you’re hollowing out the circles that you drew on the two ends. The way I did it was to divide the circle into four parts (like a pizza pie in four slices), and cut out one section at a time. To cut out the sections, you want to insert your chainsaw blade directly into the wood and push it through as far as it goes. You want the blade to go in as straight as possible (you want to avoid cutting into the eventual walls of the drum). If you're log is longer than your chainsaw, then you'll have to insert the blade from the other side as well. If the incisions on the two sides match, you should be able to look into the cut and see through to the other side. Keep making cuts like these until you've cut out each section.

Again, I can't stress this enough, but inserting a chainsaw head-first into a piece of wood is very, very, dangerous. A kickback is almost inevitable, and almost any manual will tell you that this is exactly what you're not supposed to do. Please, please, please don't do this step unless you're well-trained with a chainsaw or have a chainsaw expert with you.

Other Hollowing Options

There are other options other than using a chainsaw to hollow it out. One is to use a heavy-duty power drill with a big bit to carve it out. This would take a little longer than a chainsaw, but it's far safer. Another option would be to look for a heavy-duty lathe. Places that work with large pieces of wood, like lumberyards and shipyards may have a heavy-duty lathe, or know of a place that does. You'll likely have to pay some money for them to do this for you, but it's probably the quickest way to hollow out a log. I would definitely try calling around to see if this is possible.

Finishing the Base

Once the log is hollowed out, you want to smooth out the inside surface of the drum. Using a chainsaw and/or an angle grinder, remove any bumps, splinters or crevices by evenly smoothing the entire inside surface. You’re going for a barrel-like shape, so the inside should also curve as it approaches the middle. (Note: Angle grinders are also dangerous tools. Study the manual careful and take all necessary safety measures. They also come in a variety of grinding discs, so find one that is made for grinding wood. A disc with a rougher grain is probably best for this step. Discs and grinders can be bought/rented at almost any hardware or DIY stores.)

Shave and smooth the outside as you did the inside. Shave it down to proportions that you calculated earlier. As a reminder, the widest part is about 1.15 times the diameter of the rim, and the wall thickness is about 5cm for an mid-sized nagado. You’ll need to go back and forth between the inside and outside of the drum in order to achieve an equivalent thickness throughout.

If you haven't made any significant mistakes up to this point, the rims of the drum should be parallel to each other and perfectly flat (as they were after the preliminary cuts). Use a leveling tool again to check that they are. If, however, a mistake was made at some point and there's a bit of a slant, you can still re-adjust the rims. If it's a big slant, then slice it off again with the chainsaw. If it's a smaller slant, you can use a jig-saw or a belt-sander to flatten it out.

When you’re happy with the shape of the drum, finish it using a belt-sander and sand-paper. Start off with a rougher grain of sand-paper, and gradually use finer ones as you finish off the sanding process.

You should now have a smoothly finished taiko base! I kept the explanations pretty simple here, so I'm sure there will be questions. Feel free to ask, I'll do my best to answer.

How to Make a Hollowed Taiko Base (Part 3): First Cuts and Measurements

--Photo by vivek

Once you have the space, equipment and necessary safety measures in place, the next step is to begin hollowing it out. Again, DON’T do this if you aren’t experienced with a chainsaw. It’s far too dangerous. In fact, I’m not going to write in too much detail to avoid tempting any inexperienced chainsaw users to try it out. I’m just going to offer precautions and tips. If you really want to hollow a base, make sure you are an experienced user, or have an expert by your side to mentor you.

Hollowing a base is particularly dangerous because you aren’t just slicing pieces. You’re sticking the chainsaw blade head-first into a solid piece of wood. There is an extremely dangerous, and very likely possibility of a kickback when you do this. A kickback occurs when the blade gets caught up in the wood, and results in the blade shooting upwards in the direction of your head. I shouldn’t have to explain why that’s bad. The need for a helmet is pretty obvious. There is a technique that is necessary to reduce the chance of a kickback. If you haven’t practiced doing this before, or if you don’t have someone with you who has, just don’t do it.

Preliminary Cuts

For those of you who know what you’re doing with a chainsaw, the first thing to do is to shave off the bark and any shallow rots. Leave more wood near the center, and take off more wood towards the ends to roughly achieve a barrel like shape. The flat ends of the log should look roughly circular. Keep in the mind the proportions that you calculated in the beginning, but leave plenty of extra wood at this point because we’ll be coming back to more fine-tune shaping in a later step (plus you want to leave room for error).

Next, using a leveling tool and a chainsaw, slice off the two ends of the log so that they are parallel to each other. In other words, if you stand up the log on one end, the other end should be perfectly parallel to the ground. The vertical sides of the log should be roughly perpendicular to the ground. Ideally, you want to slice down to the desired height of your eventual drum. However, I would leave 1-2cm of extra length on each side in case a mistake is made later.

Rim Measurements

You should now have two flat and parallel ends on the log. You now want to draw circles on each of these surfaces. These circles will represent the rim of your eventual drum. The part inside of the circle is the part you’ll be hollowing out. But this isn’t as easy as it sounds, because the circles on either end have to match each other. In other words, the center of the circle on one side has to be on the same vertical axis as the other. If this isn’t the case, you’ll be hollowing out a drum at a slant.

1. Mark the center of one of the surfaces. You can take some basic measurements to do this, or you can just do it by eye. It’s kind of arbitrary at this point but it’s OK. Using that mark as the center, draw two circles. One circle should be about 5cm bigger in radius than the other. The bigger circle represents the outer rim of the head, and the smaller circle is the inner rim. The space between the two circles is the wall of the drum. Everything outside of these two lines, you’ll eventually be shaving off or hollowing out. There should be a distance of at least 3-5cm between the bigger circle and the outer edge of the log.

2. The next step is to calculate the center on the other side. The next few steps are very confusing- I personally had a tough time with it. You might have to read it through a couple times over, but bear with me. First, place the log vertically on a piece of plywood. The side that you drew circles on should be at the top. Your goal is to draw a big circle on the plywood using the same center point as the smaller circles you drew on the top surface. The problem is, the plywood is on the ground, and the smaller circles are up above on the drum. See the problem?

You’re going to need some string, a weight, a flat stick and some thinking to figure out how to do this. Basically, you want to pivot the flat stick on the center mark on the top surface. From the end of the stick, dangle a string with a weight on the end of it. The weight should go straight down to the plywood below. Now, if you rotate the stick on its pivot, you’ll be forming the shape of a circle on the plywood below. Use a pencil or chalk to draw this circle onto the plywood.

You should now have a big circle drawn on the plywood. The center of this new circle is on the same axis as the one you marked earlier.

3. Don’t move the log yet! First, trace the outline of the log surface that is touching the plywood. Make some reference marks on the outline and the log itself, so that if you were to move the log off of the plywood, you can easily put it back on in the exact same position.

4. Move the log aside. On the plywood you should now one big circle, and a smaller outline of the log inside of it. Using a ruler or string, find the widest part of the circle. This is the diameter of the circle. Calculate the middle of the diameter, and voila, you’ve found the center of the circle.

5. You’re almost there! Let's go back to the reference marks that you drew on the plywood. Measure the distances between the reference marks and the new center that you found. Using these measurements, you should now be able to calculate the corresponding center on the second surface of the log. On this second surface, draw two circles as you did before (with the same radius), and you’ve done it!

Or not, if these instructions are as confusing to you as they are to me! Unfortunately, this is near impossible to describe with clarity in words. If I can find some photos, I’ll be sure to post them. But for now, if you read it over a couple times and use a model of a log (like a small cylindrical cut of wood) and actually try it out, you should be able to make some sense of it. If it still doesn’t make sense, post comments and I’ll try to answer it.