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Can dead skin breathe?

mac

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Feb 2, 2005
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Hi - don't know where to post for this question, so figured that for sure somebody here would be able to help. In wanting some care info for a drum head I've got, I was told by a few people that the skin breathes. I'm a little surprised at this, as I would have thought that the skin used for drums, which is chemically treated and stretched relatively tight to fit the drum, seems to be anything but breathing. I would think that skin tissue would need to be "alive" - or attached to something that's living to be able to "breathe". Does dead treated skin still retain it's porous properties? Can anybody shed (pun intended) some light on this for me please? It's important, the well-being of my drum depends on it!

Thanks,
mac
 
mac said:
Hi - don't know where to post for this question, so figured that for sure somebody here would be able to help. In wanting some care info for a drum head I've got, I was told by a few people that the skin breathes. I'm a little surprised at this, as I would have thought that the skin used for drums, which is chemically treated and stretched relatively tight to fit the drum, seems to be anything but breathing. I would think that skin tissue would need to be "alive" - or attached to something that's living to be able to "breathe". Does dead treated skin still retain it's porous properties? Can anybody shed (pun intended) some light on this for me please? It's important, the well-being of my drum depends on it!

Thanks,
mac
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Not sure about drum-heads, but leather is commonly considered to breathe, which I think means that air and moisture will diffuse from one side to the other. ETA: Also equilibrium would be soon reached with the surrounding conditions.

I was under the impression that (modern, non-native) heads were a synthetic plastic type material.

My brother-in-law works for a major Seattle based drum company, and if you PM me a contact method, I'll forward the question to him.

HTH

Dave
 
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I think natural membrane drumheads are porous, but not so much that they're like cheesecloth. That is, there's enough material between the few small holes that it might as well be contiguous. Wouldn't be surprised to find that porosity varies, and that the level of porosity influences the sound. Some drums use hides with hair still on, which definitely affects the timbre.

[edit] You could test your drumhead(s) by sprinkling fine sawdust or similar lightweight stuff on top, then blowing air up from below. Might take considerable pressure to get through.
 
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All leathers that have not been sealed/lacquered "breathe" to some extent, in that they can take in and expel moisture. Keeping the drum in damp conditions for some time will result in the skin gaining slack. AFAIK the danger here is in tightening it too much in this condition, which can result in the skin rupturing when it dries out again.

Meffy said:
You could test your drumhead(s) by sprinkling fine sawdust or similar lightweight stuff on top, then blowing air up from below. Might take considerable pressure to get through.
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That would hardly work with even a dishtowel, I think. (But haven't got the paraphernalia handy, so if you have first-hand experience... :) )
 
I've seen dust blow out the cut end of an eight-foot-long oak board when I directed an air hose at the other end. :-) Blowing by mouth probably wouldn't do it, agreed.
 
The biggest effect is that they can absorb humidity, and change both weight and size a tiny bit. This can detune things.

Most synthetics don't do that.

Leather is, of course, porous, which is usually good when you're wearing shoes :)
 
Thanks for your answers. To be more specific – I do know that adding moisture to the drum skin will slacken it and give it a more bass (or deeper) tone. Very slightly heating the skin will tighten it if it’s too slack. That how we tune “non tunable” drums. The reason for my question is that drum skins usually are chemically treated (compared to “raw” skin), and I thought that it was for this reason that it was recommended to moisten only the inside of the skin. However, I’ve now seen several people who’ve poured copious amounts of water, literally poured it on, to the outer side (or playing side) of the skin - that’s when I was told that this was good as the skin “breathes”. I thought that death and the processing chemicals would seal the porous quality of natural, living, skin. I assumed that the moisture was just a surface fix because my drum skin tends to dry remarkably quickly and requires constant application. Also, I did notice that even though they poured it on there was no sign whatsoever at all of water leaking through, it was all absorbed.

As to the synthetic skins, in kit drums and such most is synthetic. I play the bodhran (Irish frame drum) and there are only very few makers that use synthetic. General consensus is that they do not produce as good a sound as skin, but I hear there may be a maker now, in the UK, who has done a very good job of producing one.
 
Ahh, you play the bodhran, but do you play it well? :D
 
The world Bodhran Championship was held two weeks ago in Ireland.
I won by fourteen miles and a submission.
 
Floyt said:
I was actually told that the best bodhran sound may only be attained when using a drumstick made from a dead relative's thighbone. Perfectly happy to suspend all sceptical impulses here for a good prop story :D
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Would have to be a smallish relative if the thigh bone is used - maybe a leprachaun? Can't think of a good prop story, however, I did break a regular drumstick in two to make a tipper and beat on a snare - freaked the kit drummer - didn't know he didn't have spares. Ah well, never played there again... he shouldn't have asked for a demo knowing I didn't have my drum with me.
 
Are bodhran skins all that chemically treated? I thought it was basically un-cured rawhide. Least-wise, the instructions for building a bodhran all specified rawhide. Which, if I recall correctly, basically involves soaking it it lye and scraping the hairs and membrane off, then rinsing and drying it. I suppose if the lye comes from a store rather than from mixing hardwood ash and water, then it would be a ``chemical'', but still...
 
There seems top be a certain amount of permeability with rawhide, which seems typically used for drum heads. As rudar says, lye could be considered a chemical. "Chemical treatment" seems to imply something different. Perhaps some kind of anti-fungal/bacterial? I've played a bit with rawhide, and find if left moist for too long (not necessarily long at all), it can get pretty nasty. Another possibility is some kind of coating to actually resist the effects of too much moisture?
 
Hmm. I mentioned chemically treated, but honestly, am not sure with what. I've know that most makers process and treat the skins - and for some whatever the igredients are, that's their secret recipe. I've only heard of one case of a skin gone moldy, or in any case it had some kind of stuff growing on the inside, but that was because of very poor storage for a prolonged period. I'll enquire with the maker to see if he'll tell me what he uses.

As to leaving a skin moist for too long - I'd try to avoid that at all costs, as I would think the skin would need to be restretched to the frame as the tension would not necessarily come back to it's original level all around. Also, in very humid conditions my non-tunable drum sounds like cardboard, can't get any decent sound out of it.
 
Well, as far as I understand things based on a couple of books on home-tanning, there's two basic approaches to treating skins. Well, one is basic and one is acidic, to be exact :)

You can treat the skin with a base (traditionally, lye, which you get by soaking ashes in water) to open up the skin fibers, then scrape of the membrane-y bits, then rub in grease (brains, or substitutes), then smoke it to make it chemically stable. This gives you buck-skin, which is a rather open weave, not particularly waterproof (but doesn't fall apart if wetted), and moderately air-permeable. If you stop before the grease and smoke treatments, you have rawhide, which is not very stable, and will become much looser when wetted and tighter when dried, and if wetted too much will basically fall apart into hide glue.

Alternately, you can treat the skin with acids (traditionally, tannin, which you get by soaking bark in water), which tightens the fibers and gives you tanned leather, which is more waterproof and less permeable to air. In more modern formulations, various heavy metals like chromium are used at various points in the process. I haven't really looked into what all is involved here, though.

If you are truly interested, your local library probably has books on home tanning and home bucking, some of which probably get into the chemistry of what's going on in the skins in more or less detail...
 
rudar said:
Well, as far as I understand things based on a couple of books on home-tanning, there's two basic approaches to treating skins. Well, one is basic and one is acidic, to be exact :).
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And regardless if which method you use, unless you add some sort of sealant (lacquer, wax, etc.) to the leather, it will retain some measure of porosity. Rawhide is the least porous, iirc, but is still air-permeable when dry.
 
rudar said:
You can treat the skin with a base (traditionally, lye, which you get by soaking ashes in water) to open up the skin fibers, then scrape of the membrane-y bits, then rub in grease (brains, or substitutes), then smoke it to make it chemically stable. This gives you buck-skin, which is a rather open weave, not particularly waterproof (but doesn't fall apart if wetted), and moderately air-permeable. If you stop before the grease and smoke treatments, you have rawhide, which is not very stable, and will become much looser when wetted and tighter when dried, and if wetted too much will basically fall apart into hide glue.
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Is lye the same as lime? I've made parchment from kidskins by first soaking them in a lime solution until the hair "slips", scraping the hair off, then stretching it on a frame. Continuous stretching and scraping thins the skin and aligns the fibres in the hide. After drying, cut into sheets and write on it - no other processing is needed (although there were a few optional finishes that were used in Mideval Europe). If it gets wet, it shrinks and reverts back to rawhide.

In mideval times, the greasing procedure that you describe, wasn't part of the perservative process (the tanning) but was part of the finishing process to make the hide supple and water-resistant. An entire craft was dedicated to this and has bestowed the last name "Currier" to many an English descendant.
 
Lye is potassium hydroxide. (Or at least, the chemical substitute for making your own lye is potassium hydroxide. I'm sure your ash-and-water bucking solution is a great number of things, the predominant one for purposes of treating skin is potassium hydroxide...)

Lime appears to be the common name for a great variety of calcium compounds, including calcium carbonate, calcium oxide, and calcium hydroxide. I'd hazard a guess that the latter of these would behave very similarly to potassium hydroxide. But I am not a chemist.
 
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