While it’s a great romantic notion that pan makers perform the ultimate form of recycling – taking discarded oil barrels and turning them into musical instruments – the fact is that not every barrel can be made into a good pan. A lot of what follows here is targeted at beginner pan builders who are trying to find a few barrels here and there to make pans at home, and I hope this is a useful guide.
When you’re starting out, it can be daunting to approach a barrel manufacturer, since they are likely to want to sell you more than one or two drums. It’s worth asking them, of course, but it’s been my experience that in general they want to sell you a dozen or more at a time; and they’re likely to be expensive. The company I buy new barrels from charges me more than US $ 150.00 a drum (although they make them without bungholes and I can get a pan out of both ends).
It is certainly possible and common to find barrels on ebay or FB Marketplace, and these tend to be (a) cheap, (b) used, and (c) an intermittent source. If you’re going to this route, it may be useful to go over what kind of barrel you need to find in order to make a good pan.
And of course…if you want to avoid a lot of headaches, ask your local pan maker where he/she gets barrels from. They may even sell you a new barrel.
Barrel Diameter
The industry standard barrel is a 55-gallon (or 210 liter) drum. This has been around as form of packaging since about 1905. The diameter of this drum is usually around 22.5″. I say “usually” because in fact it varies from manufacturer to manufacturer – I’ve seen them as small as 22″ and as big as 23″. In my experience, when barrel manufacturers start talking about the diameter of the drum, what they are referring to is the inside diameter of the skirt of the drum.
The reason they do so is that this is a critical measurement to use when calculating the volume of liquid the barrel can hold. (Barrel Volume = pi * r * r * h where r is the Radius and h is the Height). So…22″ drums will be taller than 23″ drums, although they’ll both hold the same volume of liquid. This is important when you’re making Bass Pans out of used barrels. And before you say “Oh come on”…yes. I’ve encountered a few sets where each drum was a different height…
It’s worth noting that the outside diameter of the barrel chime (crim) is not necessarily a function of the diameter of the drum; it depend on what kind of chime is used. Occasionally I see pans listed on eBay with the heading “23 Diameter Pan” and I’d bet that this is the outside diameter of the barrel, and that in fact the barrel is closer to 22.5″
As an aside, another common standard is the 85 gallon drum. These usually have a diameter around about 26″. The use of these for pan making is a whole separate topic that I’ll address elsewhere later.
Skirt/Side
The skirt of the barrel in general has two “rolling rings” placed about 1/3 and 2/3 of the way down the barrel. These are put in the skirt by the manufacturer to stiffen up the skirt structurally, and also to provide a way for the drum to be rolled across the floor without the rim getting damaged and casuing the barrel to leak. Some manufacturers put a large number of “crinkles” in the skirt to aid in stiffening/strengthening it. I’ve not seen pans made with these barrels that sounded as good as pans made without them.
I’ve also seen bass and cello pans made on custom barrels that had no rolling rings. These have always been seriously substandard instruments. The floppiness of the skirt caused the pans to basically be untuneable – every time you change the tension on the skirt, the pan changed its tuning. I’ve fixed more than my share of bass pans made like this by adding a 3/4″ plywood disc to the bottom of the pan to give it some rigidity which in turn made the pan more stable from a tuning perspective.
Open Head vs Closed Head
An Open Head drum is a barrel where one end of the drum can be removed entirely by disengaging a clamp. A Closed Head drum is one where both ends of the drum have been crimped onto the skirt.
Either type can be used to make pans, although obviously the end that is clamped cannot be turned into a pan!
Chime
The process in which the head and the skirt of the barrel are crimped together is called the Chime. There are round chimes and flat chimes. The chime usually includes some kind of seaming compound to make the joint waterproof. There are a few different chiming methods, based on how many times the head and skirt are rolled together. The more the better.
Scratches
Sadly, the end of the barrel we are interested in is usually the bottom end. The “top” end is the one that has the bung holes in it that are used to get the fluids in and out. The folks who are moving the chemicals around don’t care if the bottom of the drum is scratched when they hoik the barrel on and off the palette or dolly and slide it across the room into a corner. Barrels are basically one-time use containers which get discarded when they’re empty.
However, scratches in the surface of the drum can rapidly become tears as the pan is sunk. If you can see steel as a scratch in paint, I’d recommend removing the paint in that area with sandpaper so that you can better assess the scratch.
If the scratch is really deep you might want to consider passing on the barrel. However, if you grid/sand the scratch smooth, you may be able to get away with it; the idea being that if the area is uniformly thin, the whole area will stretch when you hammer on it, whereas if there is a deep scratch, the material around the scratch is a lot thicker than the actual scratch itself, and so when you hammer on that area the scratch stretches quickly and tears while the thicker material doesn’t stretch at all.
Even very small scratches in the shoulder of the pan will likely tear. This area of the pan is the thinnest and the steel has to stretch the most.
Steel Thickness
In the USA there is a common “gauge” system set up to measure the thickness of steel. The ones we are concerned with as pan makers are 20 gauge, 18 gauge, and 16 gauge. This is often just written as 20g or 18g. These gauges are standard steel thicknesses defined by the steel industry. The higher the gauge, the thinner the steel. This table gives the gauges and their thickness.
Gauge Thicknesses
| Gauge | Inches | Millimeters |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | 0.0359 | 0.911 |
| 18 | 0.0478 | 1.214 |
| 16 | .0598 | 1.518 |
In general, we want to use barrels that are 18g. Ideally we want an 18g head and and 18g skirt. It’s my understanding that in the early days of pan, many/most barrels were made like this. Sadly, with every mega corporation wanting to squeeze the maximum dollar out of every item, barrels have become thinner and less suited for making pans. Thicker steel costs more which bites into profits and the bean counters care about that.
So…how do we tell what thickness a given barrel is?
UN 1A1/X250/21
It turns out that there are international standards governing drums. Barrels have this code either stamped/embossed into one end, or marked on the side in ink. I’ve extracted what’s important about this code, and if you want to find out more a Google Search of “UN 1A1” will easily get you the information.
1A1 means that this is a Drum made from Steel and is a Closed Head Drum. 1A2 would mean it is an Open Head Drum.
X250 refers to the maximum mass of the drum in Kilograms. Sometimes you may see this as X1.2 or X 1.8. In these cases, the 1.2 or 1.8 (or whatever number) refers to the maximum specific gravity of the material that may be placed into the drum. So to calculate what the mass would be, take the 1.2 and multiply it by 210 (since 210 liters of water has a mass of 210 kg). In this case 1.2 x 210 = 252 kg.
This X1.2 does not refer to the thickness of the steel.
In general, the higher the X number, the better the quality of the barrel. If the barrel is rated to take 500kg of material, then for sure it’s a sturdy drum. This may mean that it has a high quality chime in addition to being made from thick steel.
The /21 refers to the year in which the barrel was made. So for example, you might see /19 meaning the barrel was made in 2019. This can be useful in identifying the age of a pan. At the very least, it gives the earliest date at which the pan could have been made; I’ve seen someone trying to pass off a pan as being an original instrument from the early 1960’s when the barrel clearly has 85 stamped on it!
It’s not unreasonable to assume that barrels get turned into pans pretty quickly; if a barrel lies around for 10 years before it gets made into a pan, it is likely to be quite rusted. This is also a good way to decide whether to get a particular barrel that someone may offer you. If you see the thing is 5 years old, it may not be in good enough condition on the inside to make a pan.
Often, accompanying this 1A1 number, you may see something like 1.2-1.0-1.2 or 18-18-18 or similar. Occasionally you may see just 1.2 or 1.0 or 18. It may even be 18-20 or 1.2-1.2 These are the clues as to the thickness of the drum. If there are three numbers, these refer to the end-side-end thicknesses. If there are just two numbers (e.g. 18-20) then the first number is the head thickness, and the second number is the skirt thickness. If there is just one number (e.g 1.0) then this would be the head thickness.
Embossing
If you’re buying a used drum, you’re likely going to end up with one that has the UN 1A1 number stamped into the head of the pan. The more pronounced this stamping is, the greater the likelihood of the pan tearing when you sink it. If the embossing is close to the rim this is less of a risk, but keep it in mind!
Picking a Barrel
In my experience, the best pans made on 55 gallon barrels are made from barrels with a 1.2mm/18g head and skirt. I would not try to make a pan on a barrel with a 1.0mm/20g head, and I aggressively discourage my customers from buying pans from other makers that use such barrels.
An 18g head and 20g skirt is acceptable but not preferred.
If you’re going to get a used barrel, find out what was in it. Don’t get a barrel that had toxic stuff in it. You’ll be breathing the dust and fumes.