I am making a drum set cake.. going to use a dummy cake for the bass drum but I dont even know where to begin with cymbals? any ideas??? please and thank you

My thought was for the cymbals were to use a heavy gauge wire and wrap it in molded chocolate and use a 50/50 gumpaste/fondant for the cymbals they would just have to dry for a few days just my thought.

Cymbols are so thin and are usually hung dangling so that you can hit them with a drum stick. I would realize my limits and use a gold paper to make them. There's no way you can make them thin enough out of gumpaste in this humid weather so that they would be strong enough to hang there without breaking. Even if you made an umbrella-like frame to sandwich two pcs of gumpaste from - the wire you made the frame from would show through the thin gumpaste.

hfredericks, I made a set of drums about a year ago and I made the cymbols from gumpaste. I rolled the gumpaste thin and used a circle cutter to cut them out. Then I put a small ball of gumpaste under the centers to give them their dome shape and left them to dry for about 4 or 5 days. When they were dry, I painted them with a mixture of vodka and gold luster dust. Then I poked a skewer, painted black with food color, into the ball of gumpaste on the bottom of the cymbol and inserted it into a hole in my cake board so the cymbols were sitting on their stands. It worked perfectly. Just give yourself the drying time. My base drum was actually made from rice krispie treats shaped in a 6" cake pan, then covered in buttercream and fondant. It's very do-able and very easy! Good luck!

here's a photo of my cymbals:

Well, I didn't get the pic posted, but here's a link to the one I posted on here
http://cakecentral.com/gallery/1832034

Dunno know how well this works but I saw somewhere someone using a paper plate and covering it with fondant and/or gumpaste

thank you!

Would this be something you could use pastillage for? It dries ridiculously tough, but I've not made it before. I've heard you can get it really thin, and it's very structurally durable.

Sure, you could use pastillage . But gumpaste works great - it doesn't have to be super thin - probably about 1/8" inch in thickness. I didn't make mine nearly as thin as I do when I'm making flowers.

I make cymbals out of gumpaste all the time... and I roll them pretty thin. I've never had a problem if I give them plenty of time to dry completely!

I cut a little piece off the top of a styrofoam ball for the center bell part. Then I place my gumpaste over the top and let it dry. Paint with gold dust and it's done. There's a picture of a cymbal in my photos of my drum wedge cake. HTH

so I made the cymbals out of gumpaste.. the smaller one was fine.. the larger one too heavy.. but I am posting a pic now.. THANK YOU to everyone for your ideas!