This Week In The Shop

I’m back! Okay, I was never actually gone it’s just been a mad busy couple of weeks, between the workshop finally being back and fully functional, the Old Village Market’s one-year anniversary, some good old family time in the sun and even a trip to the zoo…I’ve not had a minute to myself! Alas, I’ll do my best to get things back on track!

So my incredible sister-in-law is a nurse in paediatric A&E at our local hospital and as with almost all hospitals they're forever struggling for both staff and equipment. She decided to try and do something about it and ran a 90s themed quiz night. It was SO much fun!! We all got dressed up in 90s themed costumes and just had the best time with an incredible quiz made by my fiancé Kelly...who I'd like to add refused to give me ANY of the answers before hand...and collectively over £2500 was raised which is just amazing. They need to buy a vein finder for the children as its very hard to find veins in kids and I believe they've actually raised enough to buy two which is just the best! So whenever you can do a bit for charity, even now times are tough, do what you can cause it does make a massive impact, even just a few quid helps! 

The Old Village Market celebrated one year of life this past month and although I’ve only actually been part of that little family since January of this year it was great to be a part of the celebrations, seeing all the usual suspects along with loads of new faces. If you’re local and fancy it I cannot encourage you enough to come down, not just for me but to see what else is available from the amazing bread of Byrn Bakery, my favourite cookies from Jodies Cookie Fix and the most incredible smelling candles from Ilumei Candles it's worth it!

I managed to get some new candle holders ready in time despite being massively backed up and busy as I had almost totally sold out of them so that was fun to sift through the wood stock and find some gorgeous pieces of wood to use! I love these little 3 and 5 candle holders as they’re so basic and simple but can really make a difference in a room. Whether they’re sat on a mantle, coffee table, dining table or even on a shelf they’re just little bundles of warmth and joy.

As well as these I managed to get started on some new solid Oak live edge boards that needed some cracks filling with resin so they’re all cured up and ready for me to start on in the next few weeks too! The grain in those is unreal and with the cracks and splits as cool little accents they’re totally unique and I can’t wait to see how they turn out.

Outside the workshop I started sorting through some of the logs I salvaged in 2020, they’re ready to bring inside to start final drying but more on that next week (or maybe the week after!). That’s pretty much it for this week in the shop! I’ve been working on more band stuff but I’ll bore you all with that in the coming weeks when I actually have stuff to share!

Story Time! 

Last time we left off, JC Drums was in full swing, building drums for people all over the world and it was SO much fun. I had drums played on the main stage of the incredible Download Festival in 2015, I shipped drums to the USA, Mainland Europe and even Australia…it was wild!

My friend/mentorship with Carl from AD Drums was as strong as ever and we would hang out at drums shows, talk on the phone weekly and send each other cool ideas or designs to get opinions and just generally help each other be as good as we could. While I was now ‘proficiently’ building drums, our mentorship had definitely become more of a friendship, brothers-in-building as we’d nerdily call it…not that we’d admit to it.

Alas, one fine summer's day Carl rang me…an unscheduled call…not unlike him but later at night than normal and I was both excited and worried. We briefly caught up on the week and Carl got down to business suggesting we go in on a whole new company, a centralised sister company to both mine and his own existing business but with a focus...a niche…

The plan was to start an Acrylic only, custom drum company. Now for those not in the know…MOST drums are made of wood, MANY types of wood but wood nonetheless. Acrylic or ‘plexi’ drums have been made since the late 60s but have always had some limitations. One of the most notable users of acrylic drums was John Bonham of Led Zepplin fame. The ‘plan’ was to have a company that would specialise in this as a material but bring in all the customisation and unique twists of the ‘normal’ custom drum industry that didn’t REALLY exist at the time.

Now, there were some companies around the world doing custom acrylic drums, we weren’t ground breaking or game-changing but those companies, as it wasn’t their main route were having to charge crazy money AND were quite limited on their options. Outside of those guys you could buy a few ‘off the shelf’ acrylic kits that were either garbage or really limited on their options.

So I slept on it…it was a huge commitment to start another business but also to go into business WITH someone and be able to commit the extra time to something new. When I say I slept on it…it literally was one sleep, I couldn’t stop thinking about it and the following morning I rang Carl before work and we were in business.

We spent the following 2/3 weeks like giddy children talking through business names, build ideas, designs, logos, launch plans and just generally building a plan for how the hell to start AND launch this thing. Eventually, we agreed on a name and shortly after a logo.

Now when I tell you naming a business is hard…cannot convey enough the stress and anxiety that comes with it, you want something that is unique but makes sense, something that is logical but cool. We didn’t do anything of that but we were happy. Historically acrylic drums were made by heating a sheet of acrylic, rolling it around a cylinder and then gluing the two ends together. This was fine but gave the shell a weak spot and often ended in misery with drums splitting back open. In our case…we had found a production facility that could fully cast tubes for us so our shells would be monolithic with no joint or weak spot. Our cast shells…lead to us coming up with the name Forecast Drums.

We came up with a kind of weather forecast based logo which let me tell you…started out as a terrible cloud surrounded by a rainbow, sun, rain, lightning and was just generally horrific. We got there and the rest is history.

I’m going to leave it there as this is super long, and the next bit is cool, so I don’t want to rush it!

Thank you as always to all of you that read this, more and more of you have told me that you not only read it but enjoy it and that feedback means the world to me. I really enjoy doing this and hopefully, you keep enjoying it too!