How do I know what angle to cut wood at for a powwow drum?

Question

The drum itself is going to be 30 inches in diameter. I'll be using 1' x 6" boards. I need to find the correct angle to cut on each side of the board. I've never built a drum so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

First of all, determine how many boards you will need to make the drum.  Divide the circumference (3.14 x diameter) by 5.5 and round up to the next whole number.  Then divide 360 (degrees in a circle) by the number of boards, then take that result and divide by 2.  That will be the angle that you will rip the boards.  

Using your numbers, this will be the result:

3.14 x 30 = 94.2

94.2/5.5 = 17.12 (18)

360/18 = 20/2 = 10 degrees for the rip

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Its fairly simple. You divide 180 by the number of sides you will have. This will determine the angle that you need to cut at. To determine the length of the piece (from the outer diameter) you would need to multiply the cut angle by 30(Sin a), a being the cut angle. If you meant 6 inches by 1 foot, with a 15 in radius, i would need to think about it.