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The installation of a new head on my Caribbean Conga has worked out very well.   The skin is dry now.  It dried taut and accepted the tuning like it should.    This little drum can make some great sounds.

These are the steps that I followed in order to install a new head on the drum:

First, by way of background, the drum is a barrel staved Caribbean Conga - also know as a Requinto Conga.  The outside diameter of the head is eight inches.  The drum is about 22 inches high.  This drum has hardware fittings not rope tensioning.

I purchased a kip (young goat) skin from Gon Bop.  I had originally planed to use calf skin but the drum people at Gon Bop recommended the kip skin since the head size was so small in diameter.  Kip is what they use on all of their Bongos. 

I test fitted the ring and lugs and measured the distance needed to wrap the new skin around the inner ring and return up behind the tension collar.   Then, I doubled the distance and added the diameter of the head.  In my case, I estimated that I needed a skin with a total diameter 14 to 15 inches.  Gon Bop sells a 14 inch skin as a standard size so that is what I ordered.

When I had the drum ready for the new head, I soaked the new skin in warm water for about one hour.  The Gon Bop people had recommended two hours, but you had told me that less is better in order to preserve the oils in the skin.  At your suggestion, I set the timer for 55 minutes and checked
the skin for pliability when the timer sounded.  The skin was ready but I was delayed for a few minutes in order to find a helper to mount the skin on the drum.

When I removed the skin from the warm water where it had been soaking, I rinsed it with warm water from the spray attachment connected to the faucet.   I then placed the wet skin on a towel spread out on a flat surface and gently patted the excess moisture from the skin with a second towel.

The process of mounting a new head takes four sets of hands!

We centered the skin on the drum head surface and slid the inner ring over the skin.   I did not wrap the inner ring with cloth.  The ring is a nickle plated steel ring about 3/16 inch in size.  It has a 9 inch diameter.  We pushed the ring down about and inch and a half from the top of the drum and folded over the skin about and inch and a half.  We did this only on a small section of the inner ring.

Next, we placed the tension collar over the inner ring and wrapped skin.  I then slightly tensioned the lug that was centered over the section of the ring with the folded skin and collar.

Most of the inner ring was still unwrapped at this point.  The skin was not yet folded over the entire inner ring.

With the one lug holding the ring and skin in place, I threaded the skin on the opposite side of the tensioned lug over the inner ring and under the tension collar.  Next, I grabbed the skin with a pair of needle nose pliers and pulled it taught so that now the skin was folded over and tucked under the collar on two opposite sides of the drum.

Next, I slightly tensioned the second lug (opposite the first lug) so that the inner ring and folded skin were held in place on opposite sides of the drum.  Then,  I worked my way around the drum pulling the skin into place with the pliers from inside of the tension collar.

We were careful to eliminate all wrinkles on the inner ring .  The skin naturally wants to wrinkle as you fold it over the inner ring.  This part took quite a while, pulling and stretching the skin so that both the drum
surface and the inner ring were absent any wrinkles.

When the skin was on straight, we tensioned all of the lugs a little tighter, tight enough in order to clamp down on the inner ring - but not tight enough to stretch the skin.

Finally, I used a razor knife to trim the excess skin.  There was very, very little excess skin.

I let the drum head dry about 16 hours or so.  It dried formed to shape.  Then I tuned the drum for practice.

Hope this helps someone needing to install a new head with a raw skin. 

Best regards.  rjh [01-01-01]

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