1920s banjo restoration pt2

Pot polished and looking dandy

I then noticed something strange - and remembered a problem i had with the banjo when i first bought it. The action over the head was very low, making clawhammer very tricky, and the banjo was very quiet. I soon realised that the neck to pot geometry was out. There was no angle at all... possibly because in its day it would have been played in classic banjo style and non of that vulgar American oldtimey... this needed rectifying.

so once dismantled again, i planned to remove the dowel stick and re cut the heel, then re fit the dowel stick at its new angle.

i need to make myself a proper steam injecting tool for this job but i managed it with a hair dryer and some hernia inducing tugging... not recommended as it has a detrimental effect on the french polish and as the heel was made in two parts this could have easily split... so i used cam claps to prevent separation.

re fitting the dowel stick at its new correct angle

 
Re cutting the heel. You can see marks on the heel where the heat of the hairdryer damaged the polish... the beauty of french polish is that its not too tricky to repair.

Here it is all strung up with Nylgut and looking lovely

Although its a nice looking banjo, there are design features that i have issues with. One of which is the peg head design. They opeted for a nice elegent looking peghead but it narrow profile means that the strings fouls slightly on the other pegs. I also planning to fit PegHeds tuning machines for ease of use and to retain the antique look.

A closer view of the frailing scoop.

The next lttile tweak is to notch out the tension hoop at this spot so that the hook sits flush. At the moment its quite raised making frailing at the the scoop awkward.

 

1920s banjo restoration

I bought an old 1920s banjo in 2009 with a plan to restore it... ive only just got around to it.

The spun over rim was quite corroded, but otherwise in not too bad a shape

pearl dot missing, frets were heavily worn and loose. The ebony fretboard was deeply worn and very cracked and had chunks missing from it.
The peg head veneer was very cracked and lifting from the peghead.

I removed the old frets (some just fell out) the ebony around the slots was so dry that it started to crumble away. I needed to do a lot of careful filling and repairs to get the neck looking good again and stable.

 
As it was a fairly cheap banjo i wasnt too worried about customising it a bit so i cut in a frailing scoop.

Here it is re fretted, MOP dot replaced, fretboard treated with my secret blend of special oils and fitted to pot

Peg head re polished and new ebony pegs fitted