Banjo #6

Neck: Black Walnut, Maple, Cherry, and Wenge with Ebony peghead veneer and fingerboard. Tunnelled drone string, and extra low string. 20 1/2" scale length. Brass position markers. Mini s-shaped frailing scoop. Modified raw brass mandolin tuners. Brass and resin filled cracks.

Originally this was quite an experimental neck, so I used some fairly scrappy walnut wood. When I discovered some non-structural cracks, caused by the way it had been dried, I was already well towards falling in love with the idea of this short scale, extra string design so I decided to continue on and fill them with brass dust and epoxy, which is a thing I'd been wanting to try out anyway.

Pot: 12" Maple Keller drum shell, Rickard Dobson tone-ring, hand-painted Renaissance head, hand-made drilled raw brass tension hoop and tailpiece.

All wood finished by heat impregnating with pure beeswax.

Tuned: gCDGcd


Tuned gGDGcd (Original tune by O Bäckström)

#6 Nearly There!

All together for the first time.

#6 More progress (& setbacks)

Unfortunately shaping revealed that the Black walnut wasn't dried very well and has split. More fortunately it isn't structural at all and I have solution that I've been meaning to try anyway.

Shaping has also revealed (note the passive description, obviously it wasn't my mistake) that the tuners are too short for the slots.

My two solutions are above. Brass dust and thin glue to fill the cracks, a little like the gold in Japanese Wabi Sabi pottery, and modified ferrules (modified with black milliput) to stabilise and bridge the gap in the slots.