How To Scrap A Drum Set and Cymbals

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As a casual musician, it is with a heavy heart that I write this article. We all know and love the sound of somebody learning to play the drums, banging away at all ungodly times of the night, but as Don Mclean so poetically put it, today is “the day the music died.” What can you do with a drum set that has lived out its useful life, especially a cheaply made one with very little resale value?

You scrap it! We will be breaking down what remains of a Chinese made Sound Percussion drum kit and seeing how much metal we can get out of it. Drums are usually made from wood shells with steel, brass, aluminum, or zinc attachments. A scrap yard would be very reluctant to take a drum kit “as-is” considering all of the wood and waste they would be paying for. So we can clean it up for them and make some cash in the process.

The Sound Percussion brand drum kit we are scrapping is only partially there. We have: A broken floor tom, a mid tom, a bass drum thats missing a leg, a roughed up snare drum, a corroded crash cymbal, a stool, and the accompanying stands. I believe this is a junior sized kit, and at first blush looks to have no resale value what so ever. Upon further research on ebay, my suspicions are confirmed. Let’s tear into it.

The first thing I did was check to see if these drums had any specialty metals, not just steel. First I used a magnet, and found what stuck. I was pleasantly surprised to find that all of the attachments, besides the steel rim, didn’t stick. So let’s take them apart and see what they are made of.

Common drums have a special type of bolt called “tension rods” used to add tension to the drum head to tune it. It is a square headed bolt, and is usually adjusted with a drum “key.” I did not have a drum key, so I used a pair of pliers to loosen each bolt, then unscrewed them by hand. If you had the correct attachment, you could do this much quicker with a power drill.

I then used a power drill to remove all of the screws holding the brackets onto the drum shell. They came out very quickly without much trouble. I found this to be much more effective than breaking them off with a large hammer.

You can see an example of one drum I took apart above. Scrapping one drum took me about 8 minutes. It would have been much faster if I had the correct square drive attachment for removing the tension rods.

I could tell these pieces were cast zinc right away. They were much denser than cast aluminum, and felt heavy in my hand (like brass), however they broke without bending when I hit them with a hammer so I knew they weren’t a copper alloy. When I looked at the broken edges, it had a grainy rough dark look, which confirmed for me they were cast zinc.

Once the drums were disassembled, I turned my attention to the different zinc joints on the adjustable parts of the stands and the stool. These were quickly cut off, and any steel contamination pulled out.

The kick pedal was made from cast aluminum. You can tell it was cast aluminum because it was very light (so it wasn’t zinc) and it didn’t stick to a magnet. There were some small screws that needed to be removed to get the stick part of the kicker removed. The chain was left connected to the pedal, so I broke off it off with a hammer. Cast aluminum is very brittle, so it was very easy to break off.

One small thing to note: these drum heads were all crimped to their inner rim with a piece of extruded aluminum. I spent a few seconds peeling that aluminum from each drum head using a pair of channel lock pliers. I looked for the spot where the extruded aluminum met at a seam, and started peeling from one corner. Once I got it started with the channel locks, I could peel the rest of it off by hand.

Finally, we can look at the most interesting part of this scrap adventure, the scrap cymbal. Cymbals are made from different types of cymbal alloys, usually some type of specialty bronze or brass. Some cymbals are made with a silver colored nickel alloy known as nickel silver, which despite its noble sounding name, is really just a copper/nickel/zinc alloy. That being said, some high end cymbals are made from a bronze alloy of copper, tin, and trace amounts of silver, all three of which are relatively valuable metals. I did not know what this cymbal was made of, but because it’s from a low quality drum set, I assumed it was a low quality copper alloy.

Just to be sure, I asked my favorite scrap yard to test it with an XRF analyzer. All the operator needs to do is grind the outside of the sample clean, and then point and shoot. (They can test without grinding but it is not a very meaningful test, so if you ask to have this done expect to scrap the sample one way or another.) Every scrap yard worth its salt will have an analyzer like this available to test specialty scrap alloys, and it can be an invaluable resource to somebody learning their way in the scrap world. Unfortunately an XRF analyzer can cost as much as $30,000, so most scrappers have to rely on their friendly neighborhood scrap yard when they need a test done.

Our cymbal, unfortunately, was nothing but regular old yellow brass. Even if it was bronze, most scrap yards buy bronze at the same price as brass. In large quantities, we could call around and fetch a better price because of the high value of the tin in bronze, however, in small quantities such as a few pounds that is just not realistic. There are some scrap yards that will buy bronze separate from brass, but I find they are few and far between.

Now to tally up the score!

The Results

Now that we scrapped our drum kit, and separated the metals, we can weigh up our take.

The scrap Cast Aluminum came in at 1.39 Lbs, and with a current average price of ~$0.30 per pound we can expect to make $0.42. I wanted to point out that, although I don’t have a picture of the tear down, the bottom bracket of the stool was made of cast aluminum and that is part of the 1.39 Lbs.

The Scrap Clean Extruded Aluminum came in at 0.85 Lbs, and with a current average price of ~$0.40 per pound we can expect to make $0.34. Most scrap yards have scales that only measure a minimum of 1 pound, so this is something to hold onto until you have enough to sell. Some scrap yards will not buy this as extruded aluminum because it is so thin, and will want to buy it as aluminum sheet.

Our Scrap Steel came in at 23.71 Lbs, and with a current average price of $80/Ton we can expect to make $0.95. This was the majority of the metal weight from the scrap drum set.

Our Scrap Zinc came in at 7.87 Lbs, and with a current average price of $0.30 per pound we can expect to make $2.36. Now if these attachments were made of brass, we could have made closer to $11. What materials we find is all dependent on the quality of the product we start with. That being said, if this was a high quality drum kit there is very little chance I would be scrapping it.

Our scrap Brass weighs in at 1.97 Lbs, and with a current average price of $1.25 per pound, we can expect to make $2.46.

How Much is A Scrap Drum Set Worth?

Scrap Cast Aluminum: 1.39 Lbs * ~$0.30/Lbs = $0.42

Scrap Clean Extruded Aluminum: 0.85 Lbs * ~$0.40/Lbs = $0.34

Scrap Steel: 23.71 Lbs * $80/Ton = $0.95.

Scrap Zinc: 7.87 Lbs * $0.30/Lbs = $2.36

Scrap Brass: 1.97Lbs * $1.25/Lbs = $2.46

Total: $6.53

So if we total up all our scrap metals, we get a modest return for our time. It took me about 35 minutes to take apart all the drums, and another 10 minutes to cut up all of the stands and the stool. I need to note once more that this was not a full 5 piece drum set; it was missing a high hat (more brass), a tom (more zinc), and a ride cymbal (more brass). If I had a full 5 piece drum kit, I would have taken a more serious look at selling it as a used set instead of scrapping it. But, if we had scrapped a full kit we could expect our return to jump up by a factor of 2-3 because of all the additional cymbal brass, and it would take only an additional 10-15 minutes worth of disassembly work.

Please share your insights, ideas, and tips in the comments. Happy Scrapping.