First banjo to ship with a full set of minstrel hardware is nearing completion. My friend Aaron at Trimount Ironworks in Boston lent his expertise to the project, and we hammered out some very nice looking parts.

Hi everyone -

Emails through the website have been filtered to my spam folder for some unknown reason. So sorry if I haven't been getting back to you. Normally I take a long time to reply to emails, but not this long!

New Project:

Banjo season is back, and so am I. Unfortunately, as you may have noticed, flickr season seems to have passed: I changed the permissions on my account, and it also—to my surprise—changed all the URLs of my photos, turning this blog into a huge mess of "this photo is currently unavailable" messages.

I will slowly be bringing the photos back over the next couple weeks so the blog will actually useful again.

I'm currently working on two banjos at once—twins, as it were. Both will feature cherry necks with flush ebony frets and aged brass hardware. They should be done by the end of the month. Here they are getting ready to take shape. . .



More photos to come.

I have been getting a lot of banjo inquiries of late. Unfortunately at this time the demands of my day job, along with the grad program I'm in make it impossible for me to also dedicate the time and attention necessary for custom instrument work. In order to keep up with demand I have also sold off several pieces from my personal collection and no longer have any banjos in stock or for sale. This is why I will not be able to take on any new projects until after the semester comes to a close in May. If you are interested in arranging something with that time period in mind, please feel free to get in touch with me.

FREIHEIT

Marks' banjo has been added to the gallery. See photos here.

Testing out Mark's new Banjo

Finished, save for the final coats of oil

Another reason to love Ralph Stanley!

Inlay

More Progress:

Sanded the neck down to a glassy-smooth surface, applied some test stain, drilled and reamed peg holes, glued dowel to neck, mapped out f-holes. I took these photos with my phone, so they're not exactly super crisp.

Progress

This is what happens when you don't properly level off the base of a new bridge after cutting it. (takes a minute to load if you've got a slow connection)

Just spent several hours fitting the heel of the neck to the gourd. To be perfectly honest, this is by far my least favorite part of the process. You have to match the exact shape of the gourd vertically, horizontally and with respect to the proper neck pitch. In order to accomplish this, a contour gauge (pictured below) is extremely helpful. Right now the fit is about 95% complete. I'll clean it up tomorrow, and then fit the neck/dowel through the gourd. As always, click the thumbnails for full sized images.


Contour gauge


Measuring the outer shell of the gourd


Heel carved out to match the gourd.


Neck fit about 95% perfectly to gourd. A little more work and this will be done.

The most unpleasant part of the process is cleaning out the gourd. It's full of toxic molds and fine particles that irritate the lungs, both of which take a long time to clean out.

Gourd just after being cut open, note the seed balls and detritus:





After being arduously scraped clean:

Neck shaping is done; dowel stick is cut.

It's hard to tell from the photos, but the figure has come out spectacularly well. I can't wait to see it with stain and oil. Finish sanding won't take place until after assembly is done, but before stain is applied.