WEST LAFAYETTE  — Purdue Bands' big bass drum made its 2013 debut Saturday Sept. 7 when the Boilermaker football team hosts Indiana State University at noon.

Built 92 years ago in Elkhart, Ind., the Boilermakers' “World's Largest Drum” is a Purdue icon. But it has not had hardware serviced since the 1970s. After nine decades of hard use and extensive travel that has seen the band perform at hundreds of games and such venues as Dublin, Ireland's St. Patrick's Day Parade, New York's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and Pasadena's Rose Bowl Parade, the drum needed new hardware to tighten it back up and eliminate a few rattles.

Private machinists wanted upwards of $20,000 to craft new parts. That costly proposition was avoided thanks to Mike Sherwood, a school-spirited expert machinist in Purdue's School of Mechanical Engineering who donated his time this summer honing the raw materials Purdue Bands purchased.  The drum once again is as tight as the day it was built and has a new set of custom heads. The exterior also was freshened, including an application of a gleaming array of silver diamonds.