Morning journal and courier., 1886-03-30

| thirty-eight thousand came from the shops | of Noble Ss Cooley alone. Two other shops those of Gibbons 6 Henry and E. D. Dick | inson, turned out perhaps forty thousand 1 and the rest came from a Brooklyn shop. It | was in 1855 that the idea of engaging in
 drum making first suggested itself to MT. Cooley. He had been to Pittsfeld, where a | relative of his, Samuel Cooley, was making a few drums in an old barn. Disguised with the business, Samuel Cooley was about to throw it up; he offered it to his nephew, John, with the remark that there was doubt less money in it. Returning to Granville, J. P. Cooley preached the subject to his friend Noble, whom he found a ready listener. They went to work, made drum which is still cherished at the old shop, took it to
 Boston, showed it, received orders, and com ing back invested $4 50 in material and thus
 started probably the biggest concern of it's kind in the world. That first year, 1854
 they built little shed and altogether turned out one hundred and fifty drums mainly of one pattern. Year by year the business in creased; their quarters had to be enlarged, their help multiplied, and to-day one hun dred and twenty-five men and women are kept busy turning out daily about twelve hundred drums.
 Within the last few years the business has greatly developed. The old-fashioned drum
 
 only kind in the market, is being rapidly supplanted by the heater and lighter model with a tin barrel. For the manu facture of the latter tin of various colors is employed, blue and red predominating, though the larger quantity of tin drums are made of brass imitation. This tin comes in sheets of two sizes, 14x20 inches and 20x2S, the sheets being packed in cases holding one hundred and twelve. These sheets are first sent to knife, which cuts them into various lengths from which drums of sizes varying from six and one-haE inches across the head to thir- teen inches are made. This done, the strips are each punched with hole, then secured and frightened together. Hoops are placed on the inside rims, and the barrel is then ready to receive ths sounding-s skin. This is generally a sheep-skin, which is stretched tightly across the head above and below and fastened from the outside by heops. These skins sent to the factory all ready for use from England. It seems that with all their notions and multiplex ideas, even our imagi- native Yankees have not been able to pre- pare successfully such skins from our own sheep. Consequently all are imported from Liverpool. They come in hogsheads holding from fifty to one hundred and twenty dozen and cost from S1.75 to $25 50 a dozen. One firm expended for skins alone last year eight thousand dollars, using mainly the higher priced kind. Previous to using they are stretched and dried by steam in the winter and by the sun in summer. Before being stretched over the drum barrels they are once more moistened, generally in a solution of pure water or slightly ammoniacal. Then remains the tightening of the drum hoops. This is done either by strings or rods. The first are hooked on one end and screwed at the other. Of this latter kind the consump- tion is over six times that of the old-fash- toned. The wooden drums differ but slight ly from the above. The barrels in this case are generally brass or white wood, occasion ally oak. The stay hoops are of oak or beach. Before the strip of wood can be used it needs to undergo many processes, among others being bending, blaming and sweating. The first drums made used to be boiled in open tanks, and the limit that could thus be prepared daily was less than fifty. The in- troduction of machinery and more perfect methods has increased the daily production so that two thousand drum pieces is consid- cred nothing mere than one mans fair days work.
 It is very interesting to watch the continu- ous process by which log, roughly hewn from the forest, is transferred to drum bar rel. The machines which effect this trans formation are various. The most important is that which does the slicing. The log, no matter how thick, is placed between the teeth of this huge machine, usually being re- duced to three feet in length, and the slicing begins. The knife receives it and as the log revolves the piece sliced is received on a wooden cylinder and then rolled up. Seven ty-ive thicknesses make one inch of the log. If then the log is three feet through one rev. olution will yield a piece nine feet long, and the total length sliced from the log would ther reduce this huge sheet to the desired lengths. \ core of six inches thickness is left, which is taken out of the jaws and split into drum sticks or ten-plns. The yeneers