# Stave accuracy



## DrillingThrough (Apr 29, 2014)

I'm making a stave drum and was wondering how accurate they need to be. My staves seem to vary by about 0.3mm end to end (about 7" long).

I was thinking of alternating the staves to reduce the error. ie. +0.3mm on one, and -0.3mm on another which would leave a very small error/gap.


----------



## jw2170 (Jan 24, 2008)

H Peter,

Even though this is a router forum, for a job like that I would use a spokeshave...


----------



## neville9999 (Jul 22, 2010)

Peter you could make a jig that holds your staves at the set angle and they would need to be held rigid with lock down clamps so think about this jig as being a router table sled, rough cut the pieces to get rid of most of the waste as there is no need the make the cutter do all the work, now the jig would hold the pieces at the correct angle and then you slide it past a router cutter on a Router Table and the cutter would trim of anything within its grasp and then leave you with perfect cuts and the router cutter will be vertical so the sled needs to hold the staves at a tilt, no reason this would not work. it would just depend on how many staves you wanted to make, if it was not that many then making the jig would not be worth it. N


----------



## gmercer_48083 (Jul 18, 2012)

How are you cutting them?


----------



## rwl7532 (Sep 8, 2011)

The critical stave item is not the length but the angle of each stave.
Am I right that you are concerned with the length of the 7" staves?

Lay the staves out. At this time arrange by how the grain is showing.
Make sure one edge (what will become one of your bearing edges) is all straight.
Now tape them. Once taped, flip the entire assembly over, roll it up and do a check fit.
All joints should appear tight.
Assuming all is tight, unroll and apply glue. Roll it up and secure with band clamps.

Wait 24 hours.

Now sand the one edge of the shell so all is even.
Also it is possible to cut the shell on a table saw.

Now comes the rounding of the outside followed by rounding the inside.

The above describes the steps used for the 5" maple stave snare that I made.

Does this make sense?




After glue- up, you can sand the ends of the shell.


----------



## rwl7532 (Sep 8, 2011)

Maybe these pics will shed light on what I described.


----------

