12/23/2013 - The Quest for Perfection...

Last week I went out to Dan Shady's shop and he had my banjo out on a workbench.  We had finally acquired the square nuts that he wanted to braze to the backs of my spoon-hooks so that we could insert screws into the nuts to tighten the tension hoop, thus stretching the clear plastic head.  From this angle, the banjo looks fantastic!

Unfortunately, on the other side of the banjo, there are three empty brackets.  Dan indicated that there were differences between some of the hooks and he didn't feel right about having unlike hooks on such a beautiful instrument.  So I did what any red-blooded American banjo builder would do -- I got on eBay and found some more World War II-vintage Navy spoons.  I could only find two with the "USN" imprint, but I found two plain ones.  I'll make hooks out of all four and once they're finished I'll put the two plain spoons adjacent to the neck attachment.  Everything will be symmetrical.  Here are the new "hook-blanks."