To improve the acoustic properties of a home built drum (musical kind), I was thinking of lining the inside of the plywood shell with aluminium foil, but what would be the best adhesive?
The foil layer needs to be in complete contact, so spots or strips of glue would be no good, also needs to set hard. The only extreme conditions would be direct sunlight on the outside of the drum.
Thanks
Mike
I'm baffled why this should make any acoustic difference. Unless the plywood isn't airtight, but then varnishing would do the trick.
john
I did think of varnishing the inside. But this is a 10" dia 30cm deep very highly tuned drum (known as a repinique), the shell is 5mm flexible plywood which is more absorbent than regular ply, so I was going to experiment with different surfaces. Just thought that a foil layer would be better than just varnish. It's not airtight as there is a 5mm air hole.
Mike
maybe you need some of that elusive magic varnish Stradivarius may or may not have used ;-)
PVA aka Unibond should be fine for this application
There's more rubbish spouted about Stradivarius' finishing techniques than most subjects short of the Masonic Pyramids under St Albans (formerly Atlantis).
His techniques are known, as are his recipes. Back in those days there just weren't many materials to choose from and he's late enough that they'd started recording such things, not just passing them down by word of mouth. But very few modern people bother to reproduce them carefully enough. The guy in New York (can't remember the name, I'm a woodworker not a violinist) does do them right, and he repairs Stradivari to the original standards.
I went to buy some dragon's blood a while ago, so naturally I went to the tarot and witchcraft shop in town, where I bought most of my varnish ingredients. I was _delighted_ when they said they hadn't got any in stock, but they'd have it next door in the violin shop.
No idea why you think aluminium foil would be the right thing to use here, but the usual glue is rabbit skin glue. It's like hide glue, but more flexible when set.
If you want to cut corners, use the cold hide glue in a tube from Titebond.
And I'd use Evo-stik 528 before I used PVA. PVA gives a poor bond on metals.
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