(image by Ulf Jagfors)

Here is a recording of Paul playing a song on one of his akontings yesterday. Absolutely incredible.

Here are some recordings that Paul made on the new 14" tackhead today.

Old Dan Tucker

Lucy Long Polka

Walk Into de Parlor Jig Medley

rick's oak neck, after rough shaping.



the finery of final shaping can be pretty time consuming, and that's where this neck is at right now. as may or may not be visible in this photo, the rays in this piece of wood are exceptional. i am suddenly making all of my necks out of oak - and i just got a shipment of new oak blanks. i may have secured a large order of cherry neck blanks to be delivered late in the spring, so things might change then. somehow i feel a lot better about working with domestic hardwoods, and most of the blanks i am using now have been harvested by very sustainable means.

here are the six pieces of oak in my front hall

new banjo in the gallery

the skin is drying on this banjo. i had a disaster last night, where i dried the surface faster than the sides, which caused the head to tear along the tacks, forcing me to do it again today. above you can see the head as it looks just after it is tacked on, then again after the skin has been rough trimmed and dried slightly. the rubber bands help keep the edges of the skin from getting wrinkled during drying. on the right, you can see the tailpiece, copied from an instrument on the banjo sightings database.

i should get to shaping rick's banjo neck tonight. you'll notice that many of the recent photos of my banjos in progress are not taken in the workshop. its wintertime, which means the workspace is a little colder than normal, so i've been doing most of the non-dusty work inside my apartment.

new banjo almost done.

winter wonderland: not so beautiful, really

one more update for the night

A new banjo is born

this clip is from a while back. it shows tim twiss - faithful customer, correspondent and minstrel virtuoso at the antietem early banjo gathering contest, wielding the gourd banjo we came up with last spring. if you scroll down to my blog entries from march, you can see this gourd banjo when it was still a little bay banjo - little more tha a block of wood with the outline of a neck drawn on it.

Well, John Barr's banjo is just about wrapped up. You can see the final photos in the gallery, 5th from the left. It's a real nice one - real nice, indeed.

Anyhow, the first heavy snows are falling something awful outside the banjo factory here in Jamaica Plain. Happy holidays. This is the time of year when your faithful banjo maker finds himself in an annual winter melancholy. Inevitably due, if nothing else, to the short, cold, and dark New England days of December, the only cure seems to be a strict course of laying on the floor and listening to the carters until the sun starts shining again in April.

Meanwhile, the workshop is a little bit colder, and I can't sit outside on the front step carving away at my banjo necks, as I am wont to do under friendlier climates. But the work is still peaceful, and the banjos still roll off the line as true to form as ever. Rick's is next up on the bench along with a little number I've been working on for myself.