4 gourds

Ive recently had a batch of gourd banjo commissions.

Nicely figured sapelle neck with double ogees

 Nice and simple iroku neck

An interesting project to convert a Griffin banjos (unfinished) lefty neck to fit a gourd. I added flush fret position markers and a star inlay.

This one just started. A nicely flamed piece of meranti I found at my local wood yard. with big scroll peghead and double ogees. Its laminated with a maple stripe in the centre and a stained mahogany finger board and peghead overlay.

Antique(ish) mountain banjo

A project to make an Appalachian mountain banjo that looks ancient. Lots of ageing techniques to learn and experiment with. Its made from reclaimed English elm. I must say that im pretty happy with the results (ironically it took more work to get this worn out beaten up wood-wormy look than to get  a nice polish)

1920s banjo restoration update

After playing this banjo for a few weeks i felt that the neck warp was to much to live with. I attempted to straighten it using force (clamps etc) but to no avail. Then i decided to sand out the warp. This left me with hardly any fretboard material so i decided to replace it. on top of the original ebony i added, maple - walnut - maple veneer then a walnut fretboard. I also cut a bigger frailing scoop to allow for thumb action. Im very pleased with the results. and the banjo now plays and sounds great. Next will be to fit "PegHeds" tuning pegs and maybe a little tweak of the nut.

 

  

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

Workshop stuff continued... (thickness sander adjustment)

A simple little mechanism for adjusting the height of the feed table thus determining the thickness of the timber being sanded.

The piece of timber shown is a strip of Edwardian mahogany which will be used as one of the side of my archetop ukulele project.

Coming soon!!

Archtop uke progress, 
gourd banjos and gourd ukulele builds, 
3 "modern" banjo builds (ie with truss rods and head tensioning), 
Banjo ukulele builds using reclaimed materials
1930s Parlour guitar restoration

workshop stuff

Getting ready for some new projects.

A thickness sander attachment for my lathe. Next is to make the feed platform adjustable.

This is the sanding drum in the rough. It still needs smoothing out then fitting with velcro.

I got a new chuck and bowl attachment so i can turn banjo rims. Here ive fitted some extensions i made so that i can turn up to 12" rims. Thats a 12" maple rim ready to go but i still need to fabricate an adjustable tool rest that works with the extended chuck.

Some highly detailed and accurate technical drawings from which i will be making my mods.

Believe it or not i tidied up the workshop about a week ago. Ive hardly been in it since then and yet...