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Plastic rolls with adhesive?

I saw a video of a guy in India making a coconut banjo and he used a thin flexible plastic sheet with adhesive backing for the top. Can anyone think of a product in the US which could serve that function already with adhesive? Home Depot was no help at all. They suggested acrylic (too thick), rolls of vinyl? tile (also too thick), and a paper like to line your cupboards (might work but was hoping for plastic this time).

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Permalink Reply by BrianQ. on August 20, 2020 at 10:53am

Maybe include a link to the video to give an idea?

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Permalink Reply by BrianQ. on August 20, 2020 at 11:08am

Come to think of it, sounds like an item that’s not common & may not be cost effective. However, people have been using PET plastic in place of traditional skins for awhile, check out this video?https://cigarboxnation.com/video/demo-and-talking-about-my-travel-uke

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Permalink Reply by Greg Turner on August 20, 2020 at 5:09pm

That's interesting. I'll try to dig up the vid.

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Permalink Reply by Greg Turner on August 20, 2020 at 5:47pm

Here's the video. https://youtu.be/n2v9-TiJaog

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Permalink Reply by Titch the Clown on August 23, 2020 at 4:05am

That looked like book covering clear contact with fibre reinforcement in it. Plain stuff can be got anywhere but I haven't seen the fibre reinforced stuff myself. I have seen it in packing tape.

As you can see me in the other video demonstrating my travel uke I use the heat shrunk PET bottles quite frequently and they work great.

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Permalink Reply by BrianQ. on August 20, 2020 at 6:40pm

That seems to be book binding tape, good luck finding that, I haven’t seen any for decades. That’s kinda obsolete compared to the way we bind our books here these days? I thought it was funny how he secured it with super glue, I’ve never got anything on an instrument to stick with super glue :) Something I learned about skinned instruments is there’s no substitute for the real thing. So if you know a drummer, broken drum heads are like gold, you can make your own custom skins from the good parts of them?

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Permalink Reply by BrianQ. on August 20, 2020 at 7:12pm

After watching the video a few times, the finished product doesn’t seem to be very musical, the string was pretty floppy & toneless & I think it’s because that plastic material will buckle under normal pressure. so you really can’t tune it all the way up to pitch? I think a real skin or drum skin is your best bet?

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Permalink Reply by BrianQ. on August 20, 2020 at 7:50pm

real skins are ez to find & can be quite economical, but ya gotta do a little digging to find them tho. https://www.etsy.com/listing/678416303/goat-rawhide-skins-unbleache...

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Permalink Reply by Greg Turner on August 20, 2020 at 8:22pm

Yeah real flimsy except the head looked ok. I actually have book binding tape but his is much wider than mine. I knew about drum heads but wanted to try his solution as an experiment. I already made two Rawanahathas with paper and shellac even though there's goat skin in the garage for my rebab if it's head ever tears. I just haven't strung them up the Rawanahathas yet.