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Last week I wrote about Greg Gaylord’s custom snare drums. I subsequently visited his shop — I needed to get my own drums repaired, and I wanted to get a closer look at those gorgeous snares.

Greg hand-builds “segment shell” drums. In a nutshell, this means gluing short segments of wood into rings, then gluing rings together into a cylinder, and then milling a shell out of the cylinder. Such shells are strong, perfectly round, and visually beautiful. And they retain the sonic characteristics of the wood from which they’re made, as evidenced by the different sounds of the 33 snare drums in his snare gallery.

Greg then goes on to hand-mill low-mass, minimal-contact lugs from brass because brass lugs sound better. He cuts his own bearing edges, and does all his own finish work on the shells. It’s no wonder the drums are beautiful; he performs every step himself. This is beyond meticulous. This is art.

Ironically, Tama sells a series of snare drums called Artwood. They’re made of plywood. In contrast, Gaylord makes what are very likely the nicest drums on the planet. There just isn’t anybody else doing what he does.

When I visited, he was getting ready to mill a 16x16 floor tom of salvaged Claro walnut, aka California Black Walnut. (What to buy for the rhythm section that has everything? How about a matching Ken Smith bass? I hope 5 strings is enough.) The pictured shell will probably spend eight hours on the lathe; there’s a lot of material to remove, a tiny bit at a time. Judging from the thickness of the cylinder’s walls, about 3/4 of the shell material will end up on the shop floor. (Greg Gaylord makes not only amazing drums, but also exotic hardwood dust.)

To give you an idea of what a segment-style tom shell looks like when finished, here’s a 12-inch tom shell, also in walnut, fresh off the lathe. (The real tom, unlike the picture, is in focus.) This shell will need bearing edges, finish sanding, paint, lugs, heads, rims, and then about five more toms in incrementally bigger and smaller sizes, and then I’ll be right over to pick it up.

My sense is that snare drums form the backbone of Gaylord’s business. Here are ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots, showing a raw 14'' shell, and a finished 6x14'' drum (in cocobolo). The finished drum is a thing of wonder. It’s the best-sounding snare drum I’ve ever played.

The August 2004 issue of Modern Drummer contains a review of a segment-shell jazz kit, made of cherry wood. I haven’t seen the review but I find it telling that the magazine didn’t want to send the drums back.

It’s Chank’s font sale time. Deals change weekly. Through July 31.

Fresh off the letterpress:

• dollar fonts: Cocaine, Cosmic family, Transam03
• three-dollar fonts: Rosemary, Chub
• five-dollar font: Gobbler

You can’t hardly not buy a font for a dollar.

Here’s a welcome update on the California privacy bill that’s been kicking around Sacramento for years: it finally passed!

Senate Bill 1, which was passed and signed last year, will go into effect beginning today. The law requires banks, brokerages, insurance companies and other financial services companies to obtain their clients’ permission before selling or sharing information about them with outside parties, as well as giving consumers the right to “opt out” of information sharing within the same family of companies.

“We think this is an enormous victory for California consumers,” said Shelley Curran, a lobbyist for Consumers Union.

Here’s the text of the bill: SB 1: Financial institutions: nonpublic personal information.

I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last night. I think I learned more about my town than about the Bush administration.

The local theater often sells out shows on Tuesday nights, because they drop their prices for selected films to $3.50. “Tightwad Tuesday” is a local tradition; I know people who go to the theater at 7pm on Tuesdays without knowing or caring what’s showing — they pick a movie from the “cheap” list once they arrive.

Fahrenheit 9/11 tickets were not on sale, but the auditorium filled up faster than for any other movie I’ve seen there. Not only did it fill up, not only did it fill up early… my row was asked to move one seat to the right to consolidate open seats at the other end. This wasn’t about entertainment; this was a community education effort.

After 9pm, the theater lobby is a ghost town, usually. After Fahrenheit 9/11, it was full. Sixty people were standing around in small groups, talking about what they’d seen, exchanging horrific Bush anecdotes that didn’t appear in the film.

So, the movie didn’t shock me, but the scene did. I knew this to be a pretty liberal town because it’s populated almost entirely by aging hippies. (BTW, that’s not a slam; I aspire to be an aging hippie.) But getting a bunch of liberals, especially the aging-hippie variety, behind a single cause takes a compelling story. Like a war, I guess.

(This is day 2, part 3 of a 4-part series on world-class focaccia.)

The Crust & Crumb instructions for focaccia dough are clear and complete, so far as the actual mixing procedure goes. I’ll elaborate on three areas: quantity, scaling, and shaping.

The recipe as written makes 74 oz. of dough, which in my experience is too big for a home mixer. I often make a 2/3 or 3/4 recipe because these sizes are easier to handle. If I need more bread, I’ll make two 2/3 recipes, which is just enough for three sheet pans and will feed 30 people. I’ve written the .67x and .75x quantities into additional columns on my copy of the recipe; I recommend calculating these in advance, rather than on the fly while the mixer is running. (Never leave your mixer unattended.)

Home sheet pans measure about 18x12 inches and will take approximately 36 oz. of dough (2 lbs., 4 oz.) to fill. The best way to “scale” focaccia or any bread dough is with a fancy digital weight-measuring tool.

Filling the pans properly takes a few steps not adequately explained in Crust & Crumb (although they are documented, with photos, in the sequel, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice). I learned these techniques in class with Peter Reinhart:

1. Spray the bare pan with a small amount of oil. Any food-grade oil will do. This will anchor the parchment paper to the pan as you shape the dough.
2. Press unbleached parchment paper into the pan, then cover with a generous amount of olive oil. Spread the oil with your fingers. If you’re making multiple pans of focaccia, prepare all of them at once; you can stack them (as pictured) but take care not to get any oil on the outsides of the pans, or it will burn and smoke in the oven.
3. Finally, add 34-36 oz. dough, and follow Reinhart’s instructions for pressing the dough out. You may find that reaching under the dough with your fingers to stretch it is more effective than pressing from above.
   Be aware that the dough will relax and spread somewhat on its own as it rests overnight; therefore you need not be concerned if the dough doesn’t fill the pan completely. There is no great aesthetic concern here; people won’t like your focaccia better just because it fills the corners of the pan. In fact, if you stretch the dough too thin, it won’t rise properly.
4. Cover the dough, during or immediately following the pressing-out process, with a “generous” amount of olive oil. I used to use 1-2T, until I saw Peter Reinhart do it in person. He sloshed a big puddle of oil onto the dough, probably a half-cup of it. Start with 4T (1/4 cup) per pan. Spread it around with your fingers.
   Be sure to oil the dough before it has been exposed to air for very long. You need to prevent the top of the dough from drying out or forming a skin. You’ll feel when this happens, if you wait too long.
5. Wipe any oil off the outsides of the pans, and then insert each into a clean plastic bag. Puff air into the bag, twist the open end and tuck under the pan to hold. You want to prevent the plastic from settling into the dough, because plastic bags of this size tend not to be “food grade” plastic.

The recipe in Crust & Crumb calls for toppings to be added at this point. I have had better luck topping the dough later, immediately prior to baking, especially when I’m using heavy toppings (such as tomato slices) that could prevent the dough from rising. I’ll discuss toppings in greater detail in the 4th and final installment of this series.

Whether you top the doughs now or later, the bagged pans should go into the refrigerator to rest overnight.