9/14/2013 - Banjo Boys - Chapter 24

Clint came up today to do a little more work on his inlay.  We got a late start but finished everything we intended to.  I finished sanding the profile of the peghead on my latest banjo, while Clint concentrated on finishing up most of his inlay work.  Remember, he's working on the banjo for his father-in-law; the one that will have the cherry blossom theme inlayed into an ebony fret board.

I had tried to hand shape part of my peghead and found that I was doing more damage than good.  If you examine the sides of a banjo peghead, you'll see that the sides are not perpendicular to the front surface; they are actually perpendicular to the plane of the fret board as seen in this image.  I discovered that when I hand-shaped the sides using files and danding blocks, I didn't have the skill to always keep the tools in correct alignment.  So today, I used an oscillating drum sander to correct my errors.  It still needs a little work, but it's way better than when I started.

My semi-finished Peghead

In the meantime, Clint was working upstairs in the shop to rout out the recesses where the inlays will reside in his beautiful "cherry blossom" banjo.  This is tedious work in which a special wood cutting bit is held in a high-speed Dremel Moto-Tool.  The Deremel tool is mounted in a home-made bracket that positions it at a fixed pre-set depth of cut but allows the user to slide it around the fretboard.  Clint had already marked the outline of his inlay by scribing around the edge of the inlay with a sharp tool and then rubbing chalk into the etched line.  This is slow and meticulous work.  The craftsman usually wears magnifying eyepieces to better see the line as he moves the tool along:

The Craftsman at Rest

The Craftsman at work 

Clint checks out his fret board

Clint was able to finish up most of his routing and got a lot of his inlay work glued in place.  He left around 6 PM.  We had lunch at a new place today.  The Hazel Green Barbecue in Hazel Green, AL. It was very busy (a few minutes before the start of the Alabama - Texas A&M football game).  The food was outstanding.

My semi-shaped neck at the
conclusion of today's session