I picked up a used snare drum and set about stripping it down to give it a good cleaning. After the strip-down, my hands were covered in grease -- and that’s not a good thing. You see, while drums need a bit of lubrication in certain areas, the lubricant you use must match the need. Grease is rarely good for a snare drum.

Let's have a look at your basic internal combustion motor vehicle for a moment. It has a lot of moving metal parts. Cars use two main lubricants: grease and oil. Each has a different purpose, which is determined by the combination of pressure and movement. Inside the engine, the pistons, crankshaft, etc. are under very little pressure and must move freely, and so they are bathed in oil. A car’s wheels, on the other hand, are under a great deal of pressure but they must spin freely. Wheel bearings are packed with grease which allows free movement in the presence of pressure.

And how do we apply this to drums? Take our first example: low pressure plus lots of movement. This requires oil. So pedal hinges and bearings and the like -- things that need to move freely -- call for a wee drop of oil. Also on a pedal we have moving parts under some pressure, where springs meet cams, for example. Here we need free movement, so a touch of grease is in order.

We want our stands to extend and fold up easily. We can help this along with a drop of oil in all the hinged bits (anywhere you see a rivet). On the other hand, a thin layer of grease on the bolts will enable them to move more easily when tearing down.

Tension rods are under a lot of pressure, but they must be able to move when we need them to ... and only then. These should get a light coating of general purpose oil. Grease helps things to move under pressure, and that's the last thing you want for your tension rods.

Note that while silicon-based products may seem ideal, they are not really lubricants, and they can interfere with some finishes.

And that’s about all there is to it.

Photo Credit: Polina Petrenko