Catching up again.

Time to catch up!

I have the week off, and have a lot to get done. I do have a few things to tell about.

First, the Stewart banjo now has a nice skin head on it. 

Putting the skin in a pan of warm water to get it ready.

My friend Ray Frank, who has replaced a few hundred banjo heads in his time, came over to get me through the process.

Putting the flesh hoop over the skin. I had previously put some shellac on the hoop to keep it from rusting.

The skin is pulled up through the tension hoop. This skin was really small, and difficult to work with. I will buy something a bit bigger next time.

The hooks are one, the head somewhat tensioned, and I used a sharp chisel to cut away the excess skin. The chisel made it easy, and made it harder to make mistakes, such as cutting right through the head.

Testing the neck. The hoop is now nice and low, and the tension hoop is not interfering with the strings.

Oh yeah, looking good.

What a difference from a couple months ago!

I started putting the banjo together a few days later, and ran into a couple of issues. First, that neck still has a generous kink in it at the fifth fret, so the action is not great. I have to use a pretty low bridge on the banjo, and that interferes with the tone. 

The fifth string nut also cracked open, and when I pulled it out, actually broke. Well, dang.

CA glue, and blue gloves.

This picture should show me holding the now-glued nut. Instead, it is a blurry picture of me holding a nut where the piece is moving out of place, and the damn gloves are glued to the nut.

Soaking in acetone to remove my botched glue attempt.

Now the piece is in a wax candle, which the glue will not stick to.

I've captured the piece with the tip of a razor blade. I soaked the nut in CA glue, attached the piece, and blew as much moist air on as possible to act as a catalyst for the glue to harden.

Almost done. I did a bit of cleanup, and it was as good as it was before.

I've also adapted a violin tuning peg for the 5th string. I just chucked it up on my lathe, and turned it until it was close. Some sandpaper finished it off. It works about as well as these things do.

I pulled the chunks of bone from the acetone bath yesterday. Good looking stuff.