An unexpected banjo acquisition

 While out and about today, I hit up a local thrift store, and found this. It's a circa 1890 S. S. Stewart banjo, model "The Student". The head is partially rotted away thanks to finger gunk (that's what all those lovely brown stains are, built up finger gunk), and a couple of tuners are missing, as well as one hook. The otherwise, it is in excellent playing condition, just needing a TON of cleanup.

That is the original tailpiece, which, amazingly, has survived having steel strings. It was meant for gut strings only.

Fifth string tuner hole - almost a full inch deep!

Truly awful job of mounting a banjo head - the tension hoop should be flush with or slightly below the fretboard. Much of the fretboard is unusable because the strings bottom out on the hoop!

Filthy, filthy, filthy -but I do like the mother of pearl on the tips of the non-original tuners.

Seriously, this thing is really gross. The amount of filth, dust, and stuff that I really don't want to know about is amazing.

Sadly, one tuner is busted at the knob. I'm not sure I need to replace it, though.

That is more filth and finger gunk.

Amazingly, nobody has messed with the neck joint - these are usually hacked up by some slob with a chisel.

There is some writing inside the head - kind of a shame it's busted and has to be replaced.

The wedges are missing, no big deal. More dust and gunk.

That about does it.

So, there is not much structural work to do, with one exception - the steel strings have put the neck into a slight bow. My plan is to disassemble the banjo and clamp the neck to a 2x4 piece of wood with a slight backbow, and leave it in a hot car for a couple of hours. The could well solve the problem on it's own, and if not, I can always do some work with a heat lamp and some clamps.

New head, new tuning pegs, probably a new bridge, and lots and lots of cleaning. I plan to post every single thing that I do to this banjo. Maybe somebody will get an idea about how to do it, and maybe somebody can correct my techniques as well.

A pretty amazing find, and it should be a fantastic instrument. It will not be terribly valuable - in minty condition, this might be a $400 instrument, and this one will always have plenty of tarnished and worn nickel, so it might be worth a whole $200, but it will be a fantastic player, with a nice earthy tone. It will have nylon or flourocarbon strings on it. (I don't plan on getting actual gut strings - ick.)

Summer is almost over

So, entirely too late, I discovered the blog potential of my Google account. My friend Ray has encouraged me to document some of my attempts at instrument repair, and I guess I now have no excuse. Unfortunately, I will return to the classroom next week, and won't have much time to blog, repair, or do anything else.

This Summer, I learned how to do a neck reset on a guitar. I purchased a Guild 12 string that had a loose neck joint, and did the reset myself, along with re-gluing the pick-guard and bridge. It turned out beautifully, and there is only a tiny amount of touch up to be done around the neck joint, since it broke apart without having been scored first.

Part of the goal of this blog is to share pictures of instrument in the middle of repairs. It helps me a lot when someone posts pictures of an instrument that is similar to an instrument I am about to work on, and hopefully I can pay forward by posting pictures that may help someone else.

In the future, I have a couple of banjos to bring back to life, and I plan to make a copy of a Frank Proffitt mountain banjo. I intend to blog the Proffitt banjo extensively, because it is such a neat instrument and has quite a history.