Artisan Le Van Bay and his team from northern Thanh Hoa province are giving the finishing touch to a manually-cast bronze drum, considered the world’s biggest of its kind.

The drum, which weighs more than eight tons and is 2m high, is manually cast by Bay and his 20 workers after the country’s hallmark Ngoc Lu bronze drum. The Ngoc Lu drum is considered one of the prominent artifacts of the Dong Son culture of the Bronze Age, a civilization that flourished in around the 2nd to 3rd century BC in the Red River Delta.

Bay’s drum measures 2.7m in diameter, compared to the 1.8m diameter of China’s bronze drum, considered the world’s biggest then.

According to Bay, it takes up to 11 tons of bronze and 3 tons of steel and iron to build his drum. His workers performed the manual molding, inscribing and decorating for more than eight months.

The drum is expected to be showcased to the public at Bay’s workshop in early November before being handed to some local businessmen who had ordered it.

Another drum, which measures 1.51m in diameter and was built by Bay and his team, beat an Indonesian drum to break the Southeast Asian record in 2009.