Make a flip-drum noisemaker for New Year’s Eve

Get loud!

For my fifth annual New Year’s Eve noisemaker I made flip drum. I had no idea what these things were called before doing some research for this project. Flip drums can be  made out of anything but usually they are plastic toys given to kids as party favors and designed to annoy parents. I think a hollow metal version would be awesomely loud!

My version is so simple to make, that you might as well batch up a few at once. I started by slicing a board into a thin piece and planing it down to less than 1/8″ (about 3mm) to be used as the drum heads. I used the thicker, 1/2″ (12mm) side of the board for the body of the drum.
To make the hollowed out center, I bored a 3″ (76mm) hole using a hole saw chucked into my drill press.

The trickiest part was figuring out a way to made the drum hollow and then cut it out into a thin ring without the wood becoming fragile. The solution was to glue the thin drum heads with the grain running in an opposite direction to the hollow core.

After the drum was all glued up, I drilled a 3/8″ (9.5mm) hole through one edge and out the opposite side, trying to keep them aligned. Since the walls of the drum are so thin, the handle needs to be attached all the way through the drum.

Next, I cut out the final circle shape of the drum, about 3.5″ (89mm) on my band saw and sanded it all smooth.

I used a dowel for the handle and glued it in with quick-set epoxy. Epoxy is a good adhesive choice here because wood glue needs a tight fit to work, and store bought dowels rarely seem to fit drill holes snugly.

I attached wooden beads to two sides of the drum using eye screws and a short length of string.

These are so easy to make, you might as well make a few at the same time! I experimented with filling the centers of two: One with washers that worked out well, and another with a scrap of chain that, well, didn’t exactly produce an extreme noise!

This video is sponsored my Audible.com. Please download your free audio book here! I’ve picked out my favorite audio book of 2014 and discuss it in this video.

More noisemakers! Here’s a list of all my previous noisemaker projects.
Thank you for a wonderful 2014 and have a happy new year!