Build Notes

But it's Perfectly Good!

2006-06-26T05:47:00.000-07:00

Craig's List Score
Originally uploaded by Usonian.

I scored an old Harmony Marquis banjo from Craig's List last Friday. Sight unseen I figured I could harvest the tailpiece, tension hoop, tension hooks, nuts, and (if it had them) hex or shoe bolts from the thing, hardware that would cost more to buy separately nowadays... and wind up with a spare neck, pot, and resonator as part of the deal.

Old brands like Harmony and Kay are the target of much scorn among banjo enthusiasts, and not without reason; they tended to be cheaply made, with pots made out of either bakelite or (as is the case with this Harmony) solid aluminum, and more often than not they'd be poorly set up... the end result being that aspiring banjo players would be frustrated away from the instrument.

Given that reputation, I was surprised how solid this banjo felt when I saw it... it looks like it's seen very little use over its 30ish+ year existence. There's some damage to the binding right near the 5th string peg and the fake mother of pearl inlays have yellowed a bit, but other than that the only wear I see are the sorts of nicks and scratches an instrument would pick up from kicking around the corner of somebody's living room without a case. There's even still a protective layer of paper on the truss rod cover, never removed.

Whoever strung the instrument last probably contributed a great deal to its non-use; strings were attached to the tailpiece in apparently random order, which means they're crossing the bridge at impossible angles and wanting to pull it out of position. The friction fifth string peg was loose, which would have been tremendously frustrating, and the other four strings were tuned way too low.

The yankee pragmatist in me observes all of this, and says, "Why, for the cost of a new set of strings and an hour or so of tinkering, you'd have a perfectly good knockabout resonator banjo!"

The only problem is, I really don't need a knockabout resonator banjo. I find myself concentrating on clawhammer playing these days, and one neglected resonator banjo is quite enough!

I also feel a little bit of guilt at the thought of dismantling this instrument, which seems like it never got a chance to make much music; with decent set-up, it could be an entirely servicable starter banjo for somebody... although I doubt I'd be able to get much more for it than what I paid, and it's certainly not worth spending the time or money to repair the binding and upgrade the tuning pegs. So, in the end I expect it will be coming apart as soon as I have a rim that needs hardware.

Cigar Box Guitar #1, Part I

2006-06-10T13:23:00.000-07:00

Until I scrape together the cash to buy the rest of the hardware for my tenor banjo, I'm going to have a go at making a cigar box guitar. I'm making the scale a mandola-ish sort of length (17.5 inches) and giving it four strings.

There are quite a few people building cigar boxes out there, and there seems to be a bit of reverse snobbery around these instruments ("All you need is a box and a plank!", "Who needs to pay hundreds of dollars for one of them Martins when you can make a cigar box guitar at home in an afternoon!" "Listen to what I can do with three strings!", et cetera.)

I can understand the appeal of throwing together a functional instrument very quickly; it feels like I've been working on my tenor banjo forever. However, I'm not particularly interested in going to the "box and plank" extreme; I want something that I'll want to look at and play for more than an hour or two once it's complete.

Cigar box instruments seem like a good niche for a novice like me:

I can practice just about any aspect of building "real" instruments except for the body itself; neck, joints, inlay, finishing.
If I screw up somewhere, chances are good I'll only be out a few bucks.
Were I to start selling these things, expectations of fit and finish would be considerably lower than if I were making dreadnought clones, yet I could probably price them high enough to make a bit of profit which I could turn around and invest in tools and supplies for "real" instrument work.

I picked up a nice sturdy, wooden Encanto cigar box last weekend, and got to work.

One of the first things I did was to make a miter box for cutting a low-angle scarf joint for the neck peghead joint. 15 degrees is the traditional angle, but my wooden, hand-cut miter box turned about a couple of degrees more acute than that.

For an instrument like this, I'm not particularly bothered by it. It means a little bit less surface area for the joint, but it should certainly be fine for nylon strings. When I move up to guitar necks I'll invest the time and money in making a jig like the one that Kathy Matsushita uses.

The joint came out surprisingly clean despite being hand-cut with my rickety box.

I did a bit of sanding and then drilled a 1/4 hole more or less perpendicular to the joint, through both pieces. I glued everything up with a piece of 1/4 dowel through the hole. I'm not sure how much extra strength it will actually add to the joint, but I know I've seen it done on a couple of lutherie pages out there.

My dad will be gratified to know that I've already found a use for the old jigsaw he gave me last month. I used this saw on innumerable Cub Scout projects twenty plus years ago, and bringing it home was a bit like seeing an old friend again.

To cut the soundhole I put a nail through the pivot point of the cigar box lid into a scrap of wood bolted to the jigsaw table, positioning everything so that the blade fell exactly at the outer radius of the circle from the pivot.

I also drilled a small hole in the lid ahead of time to let the blade through.

Both of my soprano ukes' soundholes are 1.75 inches in diameter, so I decided to start there. I haven't decided whether it looks a tad too small or not.

There is quite a lot of information out there about the physics of soundholes and soundboxes, but not being a physicist a lot of it is over my head (not to mention overkill for a cigar box.) One thing I took away from what little reading I did is that too large of a soundhole relative to the size of the air chamber means poor response from the instrument top. Since you can always take more wood off, but you can never put it back on, 1.75 inches it is.

After the neck joint dried I cut the fret slots. I'm not using a fingerboard for this instrument, so I cut the slots before profiling the neck; much easier to make perpendicular cuts that way. It would have been even easier if I had cut the slots before gluing the peghead joint; that way the neck would have sat flat in the miter box.

After gluing on another small block of wood at the heel, and putting a maple veneer on the peghead to cover up the scarf joint, I went ahead and trimmed the neck profile and peghead outline.

Compared to the stop-and-start progress on my still-incomplete tenor banjo, this thing is coming together lightning fast. This is at how things looked after two sessions in the workshop.

After a busy week I was eager to get back to this project in hopes of getting it strung this weekend. Maybe a little too eager; I tried using the bandsaw at an angle to rough out angles along the neck that will eventually be curves, and trimmed a little more away than I really wanted.

The thing I need to keep reminding myself is that I've already spent considerably more time on this thing than many people would, and that the neck will be perfectly functional despite being a little bit uneven in those spots.

Sanding has gone fairly quickly, although there's a stubborn spot of glue down at the heel block, and as always there are a few bandsaw nicks that may be deep enough to require filler, rather than sanding down everything around them. I need to get a bandsaw blade with a closer set.

Finally, I drilled holes in the peghead for the 1/4 posts of the guitar-type tuners I'll be using for the instrument.

I might actually have this thing fretted and strung by the end of my next session in the workshop!

Shop Apron Lament

2006-05-07T14:32:00.000-07:00

When I was working as an all-purpose special effects shop monkey in 1997, some guy came through the industrial park where I worked selling denim shop aprons for five bucks apiece. Unlike most of the peddlers that made the rounds periodically, this one had a useful product at a good price, and he sold quite a few aprons to us that afternoon.

Mine was quickly besmirched with paint, bondo, resin, cyanoacrylate, and all manner of other unhealthy substances. I probably could have pointed to each stain and told you which project it had come from.

When I left the shop for my first real full-time web design job, I took my apron with me, but living as I did in an aparment I didn't have any real use for it at home, and it spent most of the next 4 years in the storage space above our parking spot.

I think it was in a box of junk in the trunk of my 1966 Mustang when we left California. The Mustang was left behind, its fate uncertain. Ultimately it was sold and scrapped... no telling where the apron wound up.

As I spend more and more time working in my tiny shop now, I kind of wish I had that apron. The pay was terrible and hours could be miserable whenever a deadline approached, but there was a certain satisfaction to be had from making physical things for a living. The apron would have been a nice souvenir (and a way to keep most of the sawdust off my clothes.)

Tenor #1: Neck, Part XI

2006-05-07T10:06:00.000-07:00

Fretted and Routed
Originally uploaded by Usonian.

In the end I decided to take a bit more wood off the neck behind the first several frets. Not a lot, but enough to feel perceptibly more slim.

With that done, I decided to try installing the rest of the frets. The going definitely got easier the more I did, and after the 18th one I almost felt like I knew what I was doing.

There are still a few frets that are not completely flush with the fingerboard. Rather than attack them with a hammer and block of wood again, I think I will build a caul to fit over one of my vice's jaws and press them that way.

With the frets in place, I went ahead and routed the star-shaped slot in the peghead. I'm not sure how, but I managed to cut it noticably crooked. As a result I had to go back and cut a few of the points much larger than I would have liked so that I'll be able to glue the star in straight. Between the black cyanoacrylate I have to glue it in, the black dye I'm using on the peghead, and layer of gloss finish that will ultimately cover the whole thing it shouldn't be too noticable.

Tenor #1: Neck, Part X

2006-05-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

After gluing on the fingerboard, there were a couple of spots where saw marks in the neck were deeper than the edge of the fingerboard. Without doing any research on the preferred filler material for luthiers, I picked up a small tube of DAP Plastic Wood, which filled the space nicely. It's quite obvious, but it's on the side of the neck that will be facing the ground, and with the mahogany stain I also picked up over the weekend it should be fairly inoffensive when all is said and done.

I spent more time doing final shaping on the neck and peghead last night. It still feels a bit chunky, but due to my decision not to install a truss rod, I'm hesitant to take very much more wood off lest I weaken the neck.

On the other hand, I am also trying to be vigilant about not rushing things now that things are so far along. It's looking like I won't have much evening time to work on it this week anyway, so I'll continue to mull it over.

I also took the plunge and tried installing a fret. After doing just one manually, I have a better appreciation for some of the expensive gadgets Stewart MacDonald sells for fret installation. Someday when I have a drill press I'll probably shell out for a fret press caul.

Tenor #1: Neck, Part IX

2006-04-23T19:05:00.000-07:00

Fingerboard
Originally uploaded by Usonian.

Once again I followed Siminoff's technique for attaching the fingerboard, by using two small nails as positioning pins to hold the fingerboard in place during clamping.

I think everything went well... now it's a matter of sanding, then sanding, then sanding some more.

Tenor #1: Neck, Part VIII

2006-04-20T14:11:00.000-07:00

While playing my 5-string banjo last night I noticed that the last inlay marker before the twelfth fret is at the tenth fret, not the ninth as I placed it on my fretboard. A Google Image search confirmed that the 10th fret is the typical place to put it.

It's a good thing I'm not planning on selling this particular instrument when it's finished. It's a detail that will always bug me a little bit, but not quite enough to throw out the fingerboard.

Postscript
While playing guitar tonight I noticed that the marker is indeed on the ninth fret. Interesting. I'll have to cross-reference tenor guitars and mandolins too.

Tenor #1: Neck, Part VII

2006-04-19T19:37:00.000-07:00

Tenor #1: Profiled Fingerboard
Originally uploaded by Usonian.

Although I saved about thirteen bucks by buying a rosewood guitar fretboard blank, I didn't appreciate how thick 1/4" would look on the relatively skinny tenor banjo neck. Next time I'll either spring for the 3/16" ebony from Stewmac, or see if I can find a 3/16" rosewood blank elsewhere.

Because the fingerboard is so thick, I decided to take a fair amount of additional wood off of the neck.

The nice thing about my shureform is that it removes wood quickly. The dangerous thing about my shureform is that it removes wood quickly.

Finally, I reached the point where it seemed like I really need the fingerboard in place before final shaping and sanding, so I took the plunge and cut the fingerboard to shape.

It looks like this will actually be an 18-fret tenor when all is said and done; my original calculations for the neck length were based on the position of the bridge on the 10 inch pot. It didn't occur to me to check the fret placement at that point, so it wasn't until I trimmed the fingerboard to size that I realized that there is just barely too little room for fret 19.

I'm not particularly upset... If I ever get proficient enough on tenor banjo that I actually need one with 19 frets, I will probably be happy to buy (or make) one.

Gluing the fingerboard on will be the scariest part of the operation so far. If the frets aren't absolutely perpendicular to the axis of the neck, playability will be seriously impaired.

For tonight, I will just bask in the satisfaction of how good the fretboard looks resting on the neck.

Tenor #1: Neck, Part VI

2006-04-19T19:05:00.000-07:00

Tenor #1: 5th Fret
Originally uploaded by Usonian.

After gluing the inlay in place and patching the space with a mix of glue and rosewood dust, it was time to sand everything flush.

I started with 100 grit paper to get the worst of the excess glue off of the surface, then went to 150, 220, and finally down to steel wool.

It came out great, and I can't wait to do more on future instruments.

Tenor #1: Neck, Part V

2006-04-17T19:42:00.000-07:00

Peghead - Back
Originally uploaded by Usonian.

I spent about an hour cleaning up the peghead tonight. I got the volute more or less under control, and my 1/4-sheet sander has gotten most of the bandsaw marks off of the back of the peghead (although it is by no means flat yet.)

Next time I'll decide definitively what kind of overlay I'm using before cutting out the neck, and I'll know the final thickness ahead of time.

The curve is not symmetrical, but it's not so far out of whack as to drive me crazy. The more I look at this photo, the more I can see I'll want to smooth out the curve on the left. I just need to make sure I don't get into the "little bit off on this side, little bit off on that side" game trying to even things up.

Time

2006-04-16T19:23:00.000-07:00

If I had to guess how much time I've put into this tenor banjo, it would not actually be very much compared to the number of weeks that have passed... maybe 15 hours altogether. Today was the first time in about a month that I've managed to find a number of consecutive hours to work on it, and I got a tremendous amount done.

Tenor #1: Neck, Part IV

2006-04-16T18:58:00.000-07:00

I finally summoned the courage to cut into my pristine piece of rosewood. I built a small miter box last month, and it seems to have worked fairly well. I'll know better when the time comes to actually install the frets.

Eventually I expect I will invest in Stewart MacDonald's fret slotting saw. I love my Vaughn bear saw, but it didn't feel entirely rigid - and this is an operation where rigidity is definitely a plus.

Once the fret slots were cut, I decided to go ahead with the pre-cut inlays. Taking another tip from Siminoff's book I went with the white tempera technique, painting over the areas to be inlaid and then blacking in the areas to be cut out; with all the sawdust that will be created, the white makes it easier to see where you've already cut. When you're done, the tempera washes right off.

Routing the inlay chambers was wonderfully easy with the Dremel router attachment. For the points of the star I used a tiny engraving bit I purchased a couple of months ago - so small I had to purchase an additional 3/32" chuck for it. It's exciting to see how easy cutting the cavities was. When I get some mother of pearl blanks to play with, I'll probably find that cutting the stuff out is the trickier part.

Tenor #1: Rim, Part III

2006-04-16T18:30:00.000-07:00

In the end I decided to use the full 2 inch width of veneer. In an attempt to avoid ironing directly against the edge of the drumhead, I first tried ironing the veneer agains a length of parchment paper. My theory was that the glue would melt without sticking, and I would be able to peel it up and apply it directly to the drum.

That might have worked if I had planned to apply the veneer in two lengths, but on my first try I went for the full 31.42 inch length. (Hey high school geometry slackers: π × the 10" diameter of the drum rounds up to 31.42 inches. Yes, you will use this stuff in real life.)

31 inches proved to be too long to manage with the parchment paper technique; the glue wouldn't have stayed hot long enough to iron the whole length at once, and there was no good way to apply it gradually. In the end I decided to iron directly against the outside of the drum, avoiding the staples and head material at the top 1/4 inch.

The only problem there was that the presence of the staples made the veneer want to go on in a very gradual spiral, since the surface wasn't perfectly flat. By the time I got halfway around the circumference of the drum, the edges were out of whack. I wound up cutting the veneer in half, so there will be two seams: one where the neck attaches, and one where the tailpiece attaches. Even so, the veneer didn't go on as smoothly as I would have liked. There are a few uneven spots where I'll have to go back and try and re-iron and smooth it down, but I don't know how well that will work.

Tenor #1: Neck, Part III

2006-04-16T17:56:00.000-07:00

I had done a fair amount of shaping on the neck since the last photo, and I decided it was time to shape the peghead before continuing.

Taking a tip from Siminoff's book, I positioned the veneer and then drilled two small pilot holes outside of the "live" peghead area; after gluing the peghead, two nails in the pilot holes kept it from shifting when I applied clamps.

My little 9" benchtop bandsaw does a surprisingly capable job during shaping; I used a jig to hold the peghead at its 15 degree angle to the blade, and because I went with a simple peghead shape the cutting went quickly and without incident. More and more I find myself using the running blade to scrape small amounts of wood away laterally to smooth rough spots... eventually I'll need to experiment with a finer blade.

I was also able to thin the overall peghead thickness much closer to the final target of 9/16ths of an inch. My hand-cut overlay is not very graceful.

Tenor #1: Rim, Part II

2006-04-03T10:33:00.000-07:00

I've never been crazy about the plastic veneer that came on the Remo drum I'm using as the pot for this banjo, so when I came across some 2"
wide maple veneer this weekend I jumped right on it... $6.99 for a 96
inch roll at the Woodcraft store in West Springfield, Mass. It's the
iron-on adhesive type, which in hindsight might not have been the best
idea. (more on that below.)

I was a little bit concerned about peeling the veneer off the drum,
not knowing exactly how the head is attached and whether I might
damage it somehow, but I needn't have worried... the tape around the
top and the veneer itself peeled right off, not even leaving any residue.

It turns out the head is just stapled on... very small staples very
close together all the way around the top.

At this point it occurred to me that pressing a hot iron against the
drum head material is probably not such a great idea... I expect it
would melt and/or shrivel. So, I will either need to trim the veneer
down a bit and find something else to cover the staples, or leave the
veneer at 2 inches wide and just not iron it at the top.

Tenor #1: Neck, Part II

2006-03-19T07:32:00.001-08:00

At the outset of this project, I had been planning to use black formica for the fingerboard and peghead overlay. Eventually I decided to spring for a rosewood fingerboard, but I had to draw the line there... I couldn't quite talk myself into spending the money for an ebony peghead overlay too.

I don't want to use formica next to a nice rosewood fingerboard, though, so I took a tip from the Banjo Makers group and bought myself a bottle of black shoe leather dye at the drugstore. I managed to fashion a thin piece of maple about 3" x 7" x ~1/8" from a scrap of 1x3. I was able to scrape it thin by dragging it diagonally across the bandsaw blade, and by the time I sanded all of the saw marks smooth it looked pretty good. It is not thickness sanded and it's certainly not the 3/32" you can get from Stewmac, but I think it will work. The leather dye works nicely, darkening the wood without hiding the grain.

The tricky part will be removing the extra wood from the peghead itself; the faux ebony overlay will add noticeable depth to it.

Tenor #1: Dowel Stick, Part II

2006-03-18T04:41:00.000-08:00

I decided to re-make the dowel stick in maple... The mystery dowel wood was just too soft, and the more I looked at it the more I noticed that I had sanded a slight curve into the taper.

It was definitely the right decision... I still have a bit more sanding to do, but the maple feels infinitely more sturdy than the other wood, and it will finish consistently with the neck.

Observations

While there is no substitute for real live experience, the internet is a remarkable means of knowledge transfer... When I asked my original question about dowel stick dimensions to the Yahoo! Banjo makers group I received five replies within a couple of days, including one from Dave Ball, whose three-part banjo making series on DIY Network's Handmade Music got me off my behind and working on the neck of my dormant first project last fall. Twenty years ago it would have been a lot harder to find an answer.

Tenor #1: Rim, Part I

2006-03-15T18:34:00.000-08:00

I decided to start on the square hole through the hand drum, where the dowel stick will pass through at the neck joint.

Gaffe number one: I drilled the hole on the opposite side of the rim than I had originally intended; I wanted the Remo graphic to be at the tailpiece end of the instrument; it would have been a little less prominent, and it would also have placed the seam of the cheesy fake walnut veneer around the outside of the drum at the neck joint, hiding it completely. As the saying goes, measure twice, cut once.

I'm not all that upset about it... it won't affect tone in any way, and I'm probably the only person that will notice (or care) about the position of the logo.

I drilled a small pilot hole, then drilled a larger, 1/2" hole. The dowel stick will be about 3/4" at the wide end, so I wanted to be conservative. Next I tried to cut the corners of the hole with a coping saw, but I didn't feel like I had enough control that way. I'll probably finish the hole with files.

Upon drilling through it, I discovered that the drum shell is made of very dense cardboard, like the stuff you usually find in rolls of carpeting. I wonder how Remo mounts the head on these drums.

Tenor #1: Dowel Stick, Part I

2006-03-12T15:24:00.000-08:00

The daunting thing about a dowel stick when you don't have a lathe is the "dowel" part. Fortunately, I have a new favorite tool that was up to the task at hand:

This Vaughn Mini-Bear Saw is the first Japanese-style pull saw I've ever used, and it certainly won't be the last; I've never used a hand-saw that cut with this kind of precision, or with such a narrow kerf. Here I used it to cut the corners off of the end of the dowel, turning it into an octagon:

Sandpaper did the rest. Towards the end I was able to use a shoe-shine action applied from several angles to even out the curves. It's certainly not machine-perfect, but I think it will work.

I contemplated trying to use my balky block-plane to taper the dowel stick, but in the end decided to use the band saw, cutting outside the lines to leave myself some sanding room. I was surprised how well the taper from 3/4 to 1/2" came out:

Notes

I don't know what dimensions are typical for dowel sticks; 1/2 inch at the narrow end seems a little bit small, and it has me a bit worried about splitting when the end bolt is installed. I will, of course drill a pilot hole before actually screwing the bolt in, but with the wood being somewhat soft I don't know if it will be strong enough.
Home Depot was being generous when they labeled this square dowel as "hard wood". Harder than pine, maybe, but not much. I'm not sure what kind of wood it is. I should probably repeat this exercise with a piece of maple, but I know that the rounding and tapering will take quite a bit longer if I do.
I'm also thinking about a ferrule. If I can track one down locally, it would certainly inform the actual dimension of the dowel stick at the narrow end. If not, Stewart MacDonald will probably tell me if I inquire via email.

Followup

I posed the "standard dowel stick" question to the Yahoo! Banjomakers group, and it turns out that Vega dowel sticks tended to taper from 3/4" to 1/2", which is as good a standard as any. I was also reassured that it should be strong enough for the end bold as long as the hole is centered and true, although I didn't mention I was using mystery wood; the question at this point is whether or not to remake the thing out of maple. I'll have to sleep on it.

Tenor #1: Neck, Part I

2006-03-12T15:14:00.000-08:00

I cut out the neck from two pieces of maple 1x3 that I glued up last night; since the tenor neck is a relatively skinny with only 4 strings, I thought I'd be able to get away with a 1.5" wide blank... that was cutting it pretty close, but I think it will be OK in the end. Here I've just glued the peghead ears on (much wider than necessary, but it was easier to just cut another scrap of 1x3 in half than into thirds.)

Observations: I need a jointer plane.

Tenor #1: Simple Beginnings

2006-03-11T18:43:00.000-08:00

Banjo Egg
Originally uploaded by Usonian.

At the time of this writing, I call myself an aspiring luthier in the 'About Me' section at the top of this page.

I began to take a fairly serious interest in building instruments as a hobby in late 2002, a few months after acquiring my first banjo.

I've spent the intervening years buying books, tools, and materials, and bookmarking other luthiers' web sites. Over the last year I've done some work on a short scale banjo, but keep running up against the realities of how expensive a banjo actually is to put together... and because some of my work is admittedly fairly rough I've been reluctant to spend very much more money for nickel-plated hardware on a learning project.

Enter this 10 inch Remo hand drum that I picked up last month at Downtown Sounds in Northampton, Massachusetts... for about twenty dollars, I've got a complete low-brow pot assembly. No need to buy 12+ tension hook/hex nut/shoe bracket assemblies for $3-4 apiece, no need to buy a $35 tension hoop, or coordinator rods. (I'm not even going to touch the subject of tone rings. If you care about tone rings, you probably stopped reading as soon I announced my intent to use a pre-tuned drum for a pot.)

So I've decided to build myself a 19 fret, open back tenor banjo, concentrating on the neck and getting my feet wet with installing frets and some pre-cut inlay.

In an attempt to solidify my own commitment to this hobby and (I hope) eventual business, I'm splitting this weblog off of my main site.