Sanding down and staining a drum tom.

| P R O J E C T | K I T |

I have a PDP FS Lite Series drum kit. The finish was a red to black fade. In this video I will be sanding it down from the original finish, prepping it, and applying the first coat of a new stain.

| S U P P L I E S |

Starting out I highly recommend and electric palm sander. It will save you hours of sanding. The sanding in the video took about an hour so don't be shocked when you don't rocket through it like this video does. You will want to pay very close attention to both sanding evenly and still making sure you get ALL of the old stain out. You don't want random bits of color shining through your beautiful new finish! I use several different levels of sandpaper throughout this project but for this stage I only use 80 and 220 grit sandpaper. You'll need scissors to cut the sheets into sander sized sheets. I recommend using a pre-stain wood conditioner to ensure an even, healthy coating and absorption. The stain I used is Dark Walnut 2716. Also, it kind of goes without saying but all brands make their products to work together so try your best to stick to one brand. The brand I used is Minwax but there are several solid brands to use.

| S A N D I N G |

Standard 80 grit sand paper will do just fine getting the poly and stain out, you'll see about 2/3 of the way though the video once I've removed all the old stain, I switch to 220 grit sandpaper, this is for smoothening out the surface but still leaving it porous enough to absorb stain well.

| S T A I N I N G |

Like I said earlier I highly recommend pre-stain wood conditioner. Follow all instructions, it's really easy. But just to recap, clean the surface you're applying to, apply with a clean towel/rag, I like to use old t-shirts I cut into rags. Let it sit for 15 minutes then remove all excess that has not absorbed into the wood. This goes for both pre-stain and stain. DO NOT LET EXCESS STAIN DRY ONTO THE SURFACE. I say this because I love you and I love drums and I want your drums to look beautiful, but also because I don't need you blaming me if you mess that part up lol. It can seal the wood unevenly and create a blotchy finish. It's always better to just add another coat in 4-6 hours, or the next day. You really can't hurt it by letting it dry longer, but you want to let the moisture out of the wood so it's ready to absorb more.

I hope this video gave you a bit of visual guidance as to what it's going to be like refinishing your drums. If not, at least you got to jam out to Tesseract and that's always a win. Good luck and have fun!