x-ray banjo: October 2009

A version of Spanish Two-Step, by John Fahey

Materials...

Neck - some maple flooring from a bowling alley; 3-piece - two pieces of maple sandwiched with a walnut veneer that I had downstairs (got a few pieces of diff wood from a friend)

Hoop - aspen segments (I think there are 11 - I forgot) cut at an angle to make a circle, then sanded off the edges to round it, overlaid with unknown veneer ...may be rosewood

Tone ring - hammered out curtain rod (hours upon hours of hammering). Had to shape the long tube into a circular piece with a triangular cross-section. First, flattened it out into a semi-circle then the tricky part was to continue hammering it out to form. The rod has a slit that is straight when the rod is straight but curls every which way when hammering. So it took a long time, but it finally came together after a made a male/female press to squeeze it into a circular shape in my bench vise.

Banjo rim - rusted brake line that I sanded and tried to solder together. Solder didn't hold so I drilled two holes in the ends and looped a copper wire through. Fortunately, first time diameter was right on.

Pegs - Maple. Don't like pegs now. They look nice and primitive but make it hard to tune.

Skin - old X-ray film of my back from the chiropracter years ago. Fitting because of my L4/5 problem. Nothing seems to stick to x-ray film (tried epoxy, gorilla glue, super glue, and carpenters glue) but glopped on the epoxy and it barely works but so far, so good.
The key to getting it in place was placing it over the hoop and manually using the rim to press it over the hoop. It stayed and I epoxied it.

Tailpiece - sawed off piece of large shelf bracket; drilled w/5 holes and screws muscled in instead of tapped

Hoop brackets - small shelf bracket pegs with eyelet screws and nuts. Had to pry apart the eyes to make them into hooks to grab the rim (brake line) to pull it down.

Bridge - Maple and ebony?, made from plans off the internet. Maple from the bowling alley wood, and ebony from a 2-ft strip of 1/8" ebony (was in the basement too from my small stash)

Frets -Used frets taken out from a guitar a couple of years ago

x-ray banjo

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Spanish Two Step