Stick modification: Cherry Hill Drums sticks

Earlier this past spring, three friends polled their money and gifted me with a beautiful set of sticks, made from black walnut by Cherry Hill Drums. The sticks were so beautiful they took my breath away.

1. Beautiful sticks made from black walnut, backweighted with heavy, solid brass ends. I live with these for a few months, playing them periodically to see if I can learn to like them. 
   Nope. The backweighting is far too extreme for the light weight of the sticks. So after checking with my friends to make sure they won’t be offended (they assured me they wouldn’t be as long as I documented my process), I decide to reweight the sticks.
   
   
2. First and hardest part is removing the brass weights. These are made with a solid length of brass and a smaller rod poking out of it into the wood. I cannot remove the extension without destroying the stick, so I saw it off flush with the end of the larger weight itself. This reduces the weight, of course, and also the length (to less than 15”, as these weren’t overly long to begin with).
   
   
3. Then, how to build up and restore length? I try a couple of options, hoping they will fit inside whatever I finally cover my work with. FixitStix, a UK product, fails immediately, as manipulating finely enough to approximate the end of a stick is nearly impossible before it cools and hardens; moreover, it cannot be shaved or sanded easily afterwards.
   Next option is wood putty, but what I have on hand is too soft, even after drying, and I don’t have a ton of cash on hand to throw at this project. In the end, I realize that, to fit inside the cap I’ve chosen, I’ll have to fabricate something wonky and just make it work. So I come up with the sawed-off end of another pair of project sticks, combined with bicycle brake seating washers, a rubber end for improved response/shock absorption and Super Glue gel. It works.
   Interestingly, at this point in rebuilding the sticks already have very nearly the balance I'm seeking. The addition of a thin cover of some kind may shift the balance from "almost there" to "Yup, this is it."
   
   
4. Finally, I cover the whole thing with a shell casing from a .50 caliber bullet. (This decision was inspired by photos of antique drumsticks that had been given the same treatment in the early to mid 20th century, usually by military drummers hoping to preserve a worn stick.) This was the hardest thing to find, as it’s not a commonly used caliber for hunting and craft shops have a hard time finding them legally except through shooting ranges and perhaps military channels. But I sourced and bought eight  casings (four pairs’ worth); and I hope that once I trim off the smaller opening, the remainder will just slide over my rebuild.

 

The shell casings are an education all by themselves. I'm not a shooter, so my knowledge of guns and ammo is severely limited. These casings have two things going against them: first, the walls thickened all the way from the opening to the end. Secondly, they're not going to be a perfect fit, but I had expected that.

I remove the tops, and decide that for these sticks, I'd use only as much of the top half of the brass as necessary to cover the added length and seal everything up. To seal off the open ends after the casings are installed, I make up a mixture of sawdust and glue, and stuff it into the gaps until it was full. After that dries, I seal that end with clear nail polish. The leftover, larger-diameter back third of each casing, I glue onto a pair of marching sticks that I think could be fun to backweight and experiment with. It's a little klunky-looking but I can live with it. (I can always add tape up front if I feel like it.)

Above: Two .50 caliber bullets, complete.
The craft supply company just ships empty shells that have been de-primered.

In the end, it's highly probable that I've re-applying close to the same amount of weight concentrated in the original sold brass caps, and spread it farther out over the last two inches of the stick.
(I tend to be so intent on solutions that I don't weight the bits beforehand. Sorry. I'm more of a mechanic and less of a scientists/researcher with these things.)

The balance does feel different, and better; though if I knew what I was doing I could probably shave a few more ounces off. They play better and that's the primary goal. To be fair, I don't think I did a bad job without precision tools and they still look decent. I MAY apply some wound string up front to better balance things out but there's no rush.