Tension rod on snare drum broke.

bfaaded

Junior Member
Hello everyone,

The other day I was experimenting with a tighter tuning on my snare when all of a sudden, CRACK! The rod that I'm tightening has snapped in half. Leaving one half lodged inside the lug, and the other hanging free on the rim of the drum. I will include some pictures with this post, but, how do you all think I should try to get this out? Or would it be easier to just replace the lug?

Thanks for your help!
 

Attachments

  • DSC00655 (1024x680).jpg
    DSC00655 (1024x680).jpg
    303.1 KB · Views: 2,251
  • DSC00656 (1024x680).jpg
    DSC00656 (1024x680).jpg
    314.2 KB · Views: 2,282
If you remove the lug and take it to an engineer they will be able to get that screw out for you with a gadget called a stud extractor. It looks like an easy one and should only take a few minutes..
 
I'm wondering how much tensioning you were doing to cause that? I've never seen that myself - incredible! I've cranked alot of marching drums in my past, but I'v enever broken the rod like that, but those drums are built to take that kind of tensioning. Thats one where I wish you had video-taped yourself doing it!
 
Never known this to happen before - there must have been a weakness in the steel because a tension rod should have very high tensile strength (the clue is in the name, LOL).
 
These things are man made, probably just a bad tension rod. I'd just replace the insert and tension rod.
 
You should just be able to take the lug off and get to it with your fingers? Unless the lug is a solid piece, though if it is how would you replace the threaded sleeve that the tension rod goes into. You should be able to unscrew it with your fingers, otherwise yeah someone may need to extract it with the tools mentioned.
 
Finally... Something I can coment on with some authority since I'm not a drummer but an engineer that works for a company that makes inspection equipment for fasteners:

From what I can make out in the pictures, that's a classic torsional failure. It didn't fail due to too much tension but rather too much force twisting. So... If you were twisting quite hard when it failed you might have needed to oil the threads, the threads galled, or the rod was faulty in some way. It could have been cracked during manufacturing or didn't get heat treated properly.

Now, how to fix your problem? There are various ways to get broken bolts out but without knowing what you have available in the way of tools it might be easier just to buy a new threaded insert as a previous posted suggested. If you have a machinist friend, he could most likely have that out in a few minutes.
 
Thanks for everyone's input!

I'll definitely try to find someone to extract rod before I replace the whole lug. And I'll make sure to lube up all the other rods before I put the thing back together.

Thanks again, guys.

Brayden
 
Thanks for everyone's input!

I'll definitely try to find someone to extract rod before I replace the whole lug. And I'll make sure to lube up all the other rods before I put the thing back together.

Thanks again, guys.

Brayden

You shouldn't need to replace the whole lug. If you take the lug apart, you'll see it has three parts: the outer lug housing, a spring, and the female threaded receiver that the spring presses against. Just replace the receiver and the tuning bolt and you will be good to go. That is, unless the lug housing is damaged.
 
You shouldn't need to replace the whole lug. If you take the lug apart, you'll see it has three parts: the outer lug housing, a spring, and the female threaded receiver that the spring presses against. Just replace the receiver and the tuning bolt and you will be good to go. That is, unless the lug housing is damaged.

I will give that a try this morning.. we'll see how it goes, hahah.

EDIT:

Took off the lug, this is what I saw inside.
 

Attachments

  • DSC00658 (1024x680).jpg
    DSC00658 (1024x680).jpg
    412 KB · Views: 2,148
Last edited:
I believe you just remove the black spacer, the one next to the broken rod and then try to unscrew it by hand or with some needle nose pliers. If that doesn't work then replace the sleeve if possible, like was mentioned.
 
The only problem is that the rod is going through the spacer. I'll keep trying to ease it out.
 
Oh wow, so it's threaded through the spacer? Damn that sucks. I would think that the spacer holds the sleeve in place so that means unless you can unscrew the rod out of the spacer, you're SOL and have to get it drilled or replace the whole lug. At least one good thing is that you have some threads or part of the rod to work with.

Well what ever happens good luck and keep us updated....

PDP
 
You shouldn't need to replace the whole lug. If you take the lug apart, you'll see it has three parts: the outer lug housing, a spring, and the female threaded receiver that the spring presses against. Just replace the receiver and the tuning bolt and you will be good to go. That is, unless the lug housing is damaged.

This........just take the lug off and look inside. The pieces were shown to you in the second post and are cheap.
 
This........just take the lug off and look inside. The pieces were shown to you in the second post and are cheap.

I thought I already took off the lug and looked inside, am I just not understanding what you're saying? Hahah, the tension rod is going through the spacer that is there..
 
Update on this, I found a pair of pliers and eventually got the rod out. It looked like it had somehow been crossthreaded in there, but yeah! Got it out! Thanks for everyone's ideas.

Brayden.
 
Back
Top