lorax

If you are going to make the shells from scratch you need to consider your woods and whether you're going to join your wood (as Micheal shows with his staved bongos) or hollow out a trunk of appropriate size....

Also consider your wood. Here in Ecuador, the best wood for drums is considered to be Strangler Fig, followed by Ceiba and Cedro (tropical red cedar) but you should take a look in your local drumshop and ask the people there about the woods used in those drums as well. You'll need something fairly hard with a strong tensile strength. Personally, I like jointed Maple for deeper-sounding drums (like pow-wow drums) and hollowed Strangler Fig for talking drums, but that's a personal preference. You can, if you like, make drums out of pine and they'll sound great.

Will you be making your own skins as well? Wood or actual skin? What kind of tone are you looking for? If you're going with skin heads, are you putting on tuning pegs (ala kit heads) or tuning with cords (ala talking drums)?