10/7/2013 - Banjo Boys - Chapter 25

Clint has continued to work on his inlay over the last couple of weeks.  The banjo he's working on is going to his father-in-law and has a theme of "cherry blossoms."  He designed several small cherry boughs with open blossoms.  He then cut the separate pieces out of different woods that he acquired for this project: boughs - curly maple, petals - holly.  Then he acquired some colored dyes to tint parts of the inlay.  For the centers of the blossoms he blended a yellow dry powder dye with some two-part epoxy and filled a small cavity with the mixture.  When he finished the inlay, it looked like this:

I think the result is remarkable.  We'll add some better pictures at a later date.  In the meantime, I've been working on my peghead, which I'm keeping very simple:

11/9/2013 - Banjo Boys - Chapter 26

After several weeks of various distractions -- personal travel, family commitments, and/or lousy weather -- the Banjo Boys met again today to work on their latest projects.  We had two goals in mind.  First, we wanted to figure out how to apply an edge to the wood rims we had acquired for the current set of banjos.

We had decided to use wooden rims in lieu of the Buick turbine rings to build more traditional banjos.  After careful research, we concluded that purchasing finished rims made more sense than trying to laminate them ourselves (although I wouldn't rule that out for some future build).  We decided to buy the crafted rims from Rickard Banjos in Aurora, Ontario, Canada.  I bought a curly maple rim, while Clint bought a cherry rim to match the cherry blossom banjo's neck.  The quality of the Rickard products is exceptional.

On Clint's rim, he wants to put an ebony edge that will align with an ebony heel cap on the neck.  In addition, we both had decided to glue a Honduran Rosewood strip around the edge of the rim where the leather head is stretched.  This creates a wooden "tone ring" that in cross section looks like this:

The challenge was to figure out the most efficient geometry to use for these edges to conserve as much wood as possible yet still be something that we could fabricate with the tools at hand.  We finally decided to make each edge out of eight wedge shaped sections.  They needed to be wide enough to cover both the outer edge and inner edge of the circular rim.  After working out the geometry, we set the saw angle at 22.5° and cut all of our wedges, both ebony (for Clint's banjo) and Honduran rosewood (for both banjos).  We carefully marked the rims with 1/8 sections so we could align the pieces being glued.  We then proceeded to glue the sections one segment at a time.

When we were done gluing, we set the rims aside so we could begin routing out the ogive cutout that is placed in the area of the 17th fret.  It will look like this detail on our drawing:

I had Clint set up the router table and then make a guide template that matched the shape of the curved line on the drawing.  We determined where the guide had to be located in order that we could rest one corner of the inverted neck against it as we fed the neck into the spinning router bit.  This is one operation that we didn't want to mess up, since Clint had so many hours invested in his beautifully inlaid neck.  Here's a sequence of pictures of the process:

After repeating this routing process a couple of dozen times, chewing away a little more wood each time, the residue left behind can be leveled with sand paper to look like this:

After finishing with the ogive work, we began carefully removing the outer overlap of the rim work we had done.  After a lot of careful cutting and sanding, we were able to get the outer surface of the edge material flush with the outer surface of the rim itself.  We haven't quite figured out how we're going to approach the cutting and sanding of the inside surface of the newly-glued edge pieces.  

We put away our tools and cleaned up the shop and called it a day.  We were pleased at the results.

Sunday, 10 November, 2013
Addendum to Chapter 26 -- Today I decided to see if I could complete the cutting and smoothing of the inside of the tone ring.  I decided to first cut the excess wood away with a coping saw, trying to leave about 1/16" along the glued surface.  I was very careful to avoid scarring the inside of the maple rim. 

Once I had done this, I used a straight router bit that has a tiny ball bearing mounted on it.  By rolling the bearing along the surface of the curly maple rim, the cutter removes all  the Honduran rosewood that extends beyond that surface.  The result was very satisfying.

12/7/2013 - Banjo Boys - Chapter 27

Clint bundles up to shape his rim on the router table outside

I had been on a business trip and got home late Friday night.  Clint suggested that we not meet for breakfast, but rather, that he would bring breakfast up to the shop so we could spend more time on building our banjos.  He arrived with biscuits and coffee around 8:20 AM.  It was a very cold, blustery day, but the rains had apparently passed.  I had moved Winston (the '32 Plymouth) outside, so we could work inside the garage with the big door closed.  It worked pretty well.  Upstairs, we lit off the kerosene heater and within an hour, it was toasty warm.

Zoey inspects the heater

We had several goals today.  Clint wanted to finish gluing his rosewood on the edge of the maple rim.  He also needed to cut or sand it down to the surface level of the maple rim and then cut the angled bevel to form a "knife edge" along the outer edge of the rosewood where the leather head bends at a right angle toward the tensioning hoops.  Clint also hoped to get his last inlay placed in the hollow area created by the ogive cut we made last time.  He also thought he might have time to cut the outer profile of the peghead.

I was less ambitious.  I hoped to sand, dye, and oil my rim,

Clint does his last inlay

since I already had finished shaping and smoothing my rosewood edge.  I also thought I might get a chance to further shape the back of the neck -- a tedious, slow, handcrafting process.

Clint finishes up his rim

Clint began by routing the relief for his last inlay and gluing it in place.  He then glued and clamped the eight pieces of Honduran rosewood that will form his "tone ring" along the top surface of the maple rim.  We ran into a slight glitch at this point.  Apparently, he had two sets of eight pie cut pieces and they were not quite the same thickness.  He glued some pieces from each set, so now the top surface of the glued rim was not all at the same height.  The solution was to run the entire rim through the thickness sander several times, removing a few thousandths of an inch each time, until we had a flat, continuous surface.  Then, Clint was able to sand the inside surface flush with the maple rim and run it on the router table to form the tone ring knife edge.  He then could sand everything smooth.

After he finished the rim, he clearly marked the profile of his peghead and cut it out on the bandsaw, followed by lots of detailed sanding to clean it up.

The tobacco brown stain really
highlights the maple grain.

My knife edge looks great after
sanding and applying Tung Oil

I finished sanding my rim and applied the tobacco brown dye that would bring out the beautiful curly maple grain.  Then I applied the first of many coats of Tung Oil.  I was really happy with the results.

I decided it was too late in the day to start on the neck and besides. the Auburn-Missouri game was about to start which would decide the SEC championship...

12/14/2013 - Music!

One of our colleagues at work, Jay Puckett, mentioned to Clint and me that he had a couple of friends who were taking banjo lessons.  We agreed to bring our banjos in on Friday, finished or unfinished, so these fellows, Mike Greene and Bob Francis, could visit and see what we had done.  They showed up and Mike played Clint's finished instrument:

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."

1/19/2014 - Banjo Boys - Chapters 28 & 29

The shaped base of the neck determines the alignment of the banjo.
The recessed section accommodates the flesh hoop and tension hoop.

Clint has been up twice and I haven't taken a single picture or written a single word.  He's been working hard on his "Cherry Blossom" banjo.  It's going to be a spectacular instrument.  He finished his inlay in December and came to the shop on December 28th to cut his fret slots.  We couldn't find the miter box that we had built a year ago to cut fret slots, so we made a new one.  He finished cutting the slots and took some tools and sandpaper with him to finish shaping the neck at home.  When he got here yesterday, a lot of progress was evident:

• He had finished sanding his cherry rim (with one Honduran rosewood edge and one ebony edge) and had applied several thin coats of polymerized tung oil.  It looks incredible!
• He had drilled the holes for all his tensioning brackets,
• He had finished shaping the neck and applied tung oil to it as well,
• He had installed and almost finished his frets.

A polished spoon-hook

When Clint was here in December, I discovered that my neck had bowed due to the tightness of the frets in their fret slots.  The lateral pressure exerted by the tangs was substantial enough to cause the entire neck to develop a curve I could see if I looked down the length of the fretboard.  I removed those frets.  I also dismantled my Buick banjo to polish the spoon

The jig used to shape the
 base of the neck

hooks where they exhibited burn marks from the brazing operation that attached the spoons to the square nuts needed to tighten the head.  

The main challenge for today was to set up the necessary jigs to shape the base of the neck where it fits against the rim.

The dowel stick blanks

We decided to start by cutting our dowel stick blanks out of the waste piece that results from cutting out the back profile of the neck.  By using this scrap piece this way, we ensure that the dowel rod has the same grain and pattern as the neck.  We set these aside and began the setup for the neck shaping.  

After about two hours of careful measuring and remeasuring, both necks are shaped.

The next step was to drill the pilot hole from the bottom of the rim through both sides of the rim and into the heel of the neck while holding the parts in perfect alignment.  We were able to complete this operation on both Clint's and my banjo.

I've ordered a new counterbore bit to enable us to cut the dowel hole in the neck and if it arrives by next weekend, we'll probably do that next.  Stay tuned...

1/20/2014 - Late Breaking News!

After Clint went home on Saturday, he decided to assemble his rim to see what it will look like with hardware installed.  He had acquired brass hardware and then researched how brass is "antique" finished.  The result is terrific...

3/2/2014 - Banjo Boys - Chapter 30

Bob's partly assembled banjo -- neck and rim now fit together

Clint and I haven't gotten together for several weeks because of many different conflicting activities and business travel.  So today was special and the weather forecast was promising with only a 20% chance of rain and highs in the 60s.  Clint got up here around 8:30, accompanied by Zoe.  Naturally, Sheila and Goldie were excited to see their cousin.  I left them out of their pen all day and they stayed close to the shop.

We first set up to counterbore our holes in the rim and heel into which the dowel rod is glued.  The way this is done is quite clever (I didn't think of this, by the way.).  After shaping the base of the neck where it attaches to the rim, the two major parts, neck and rim, are held in a fixture to maintain their proper alignment.  Then, using an 18" long drill bit, we bore a 1/4" hole in the bottom of the rim, through the opposite side of the rim where it contacts the neck, and a couple of inches into the heel of the neck.  This hole allows the builder to insert a 1/4" steel rod completely through both rim holes and into the neck hole.  The next step is to make a

The Fuller Counterbore

larger hole in the upper part of the rim and the neck.  This hole must have the same axis as the initial 1/4" hole to keep the neck in proper alignment with the rim.  Fortunately, there's a tool that can accomplish this.  It's called a Fuller Type B counterbore bit.  Think of a 5/8" drill bit with a 1/4" hole in its center line.  Add a couple of set screws, and you have the tool needed.  We insert the steel rod into the lower hole on the rim, then lock the counterbore near the end of the rod, then insert the rod into the opposite rim hole, and begin boring.  When the wood chips quit flying, we've bored a 5/8" hole through the upper rim and into the neck.

Next, we shaped the upper 1-1/2" of the square dowel rod into a round 5/8" peg that will be glued into the neck.  The finished product looks like this:

The 5/8" hole in the rim is then expanded into a square just large enough for the tapered dowel rod to slide into.  The square shape keeps the neck from rotating relative to the rim.  We want to keep the fretboard surface transversely parallel to the plane of the banjo head.  The neck will be held tightly against the rim by the attaching hardware we will install later.

The last thing we did today was to cut and install the nut that supports the upper end of the strings.  We are both using black water buffalo horn for our nuts.  The nut groove is trimmed to ensure a snug fit for the nut and then the nut is lightly glued in place.

The finished peghead with nut installed

I spent the last hour or so shaping my heel and staining the entire neck and rim.  As with my previous "Buick" banjo, I used a dark tobacco brown stain.  The amount of "curl" in the maple is really remarkable.  I think it's going to be a very nice instrument.

Clint did most of the same operations I did.  He's trying to finish up his "cherry blossom" banjo as a gift for his father-in-law.  It's really looking spectacular!

'Til next time...

3/22/2014 - Banjo Boys - Chapter 31 - Finishing the Cherry Blossom Banjo

Photo courtesy of Mary Ann Mead
Official photographer for the Banjo Boys of Fayetteville

Today, Clint was coming up to the shop to see if he could finish up his cherry blossom-themed banjo.  I hoped to get the holes properly drilled in my maple rim and get my brass hardware installed.  I also had noticed that my heel was too "fat" and exhibited some sandpaper scratches that I needed to eliminate.  We both got partway to our objectives.

Clint started by gluing a split in his dowel stick where he had drilled a longitudinal hole for the endpin to screw into it.  He glued and clamped the split.  This is a very difficult kind of break to repair, since the intercellular bond of the wood has been compromised.  Sure

A typical square dowel stick ferrule

enough, when Clint tried to screw the endpin back into the dowel end, it broke along the glue line.  We discussed the possibilities.  A square-shaped metal jacket, forced over the end of the dowel stick would do the job, but how to bend such a piece with the equipment at hand was a mystery.  It needed to have sharp bends and fit tightly around the perimeter of the dowel stick.  We went back to the drawing board.  What if we could find a tubular brass object of the correct diameter?  Clint could round the square edges of the dowel stick up to a point past the split and force fit it to secure the repair.  We proceeded to the local Ace Hardware store where we found a perfectly-sized brass collar.  Clint cut the threads of one end, smoothed it up, rounded his dowel, drove the collar over the first few inches of the stick, and cut it to the proper length.  The repair was made!

The screws that hold the "shoes"

The shoes, hooks and nuts that
hold the tension hoop

I began the day laying out the pattern for the holes I needed to drill in the maple rim that I had already sanded, stained, oiled, and cut to receive my dowel stick.  I had purchased a pre-notched tension hoop from Rickard Banjos in Canada a few weeks ago.  One of the nice features of a pre-cut hoop is that it provides a guide for the positions of the needed holes.  I centered the string cutout in line with the square hole in the rim into which the dowel stick fits tightly, thinking that that hole represents the center line of the neck.  Then I taped the tension hoop to the wooden rim at a level where the holes needed to be for the hooks to work properly.  This was a little trick suggested by Clint.  I carefully marked each hole location with an awl and then proceeded to drill the holes for the tiny machine screws that anchor each of the so-called shoes.  The shoes are drilled and the hooks extend through this hole and are put under tension by nuts that cover the threaded ends of the hook shaft.  These are held in place by hex-headed brass machine screws extending through the rim.

The ferrule repair

The surprise came when I installed the neck again to check everything, only to discover that my dowel rod is just enough off-center where it enters the nack, that it causes an interference between the side of the heel and one of the shoes.  I'm now in the process of reshaping the heel to make it more narrow, hopefully narrow enough to eliminate the interference.

Clint finished the repair to his dowel stick and it came out fine.  He's going to polish the brass and then antique it using some acid solution he has used previously.  He then shaped the nut that goes at the top of the fretboard, glued it in place, and filed the grooves (slots) that will accommodate the strings.  I think he plans to put strings on it this weekend.  We knocked off early, since Clint had a previous commitment for the afternoon.

The finished maple rim

10/4/2015 - Banjo Boys - Chapter 32 - The Death Saw

Clint and Bob at work on the "death saw"

It's been a very long time since you've heard from the Banjo Boys.  Some of that silence had to do with the fact that it was too hot to work in the shop.  Some had to do with distractions other than banjos.  But this weekend, Clint came up to the shop to build a new jig, inaugurate a "new" tool, and to shape the heel of a banjo neck that goes back several months.

The surface of the banjo neck that attaches to the rim is critical to the proper alignment of the neck.  It must first have a slight concavity when looked at from above to accommodate the convex shape of the rim.  That concave profile must be symmetrical from side to side to ensure that the center line of the neck extends through the center of the rim (you want the bridge to be centered across the rim perpendicular to the axis of the fingerboard).  And there is a precise tilt to the neck that ensures that with the string clearance correctly set over the frets, the bridge height on the banjo head is correct (usually around 3/8").

On our earlier banjos, we had crafted a jig that we used on a table saw.  I wrote about that jig and its operation in Chapter Seven of the Banjo Boys' saga.  It worked, but had a fair amount of variability in the resulting heel surface.  Clint had realized that when Chris Dean built his Dynaflow banjos, he used a radial arm saw to shape the heel contact surface.  It looked to both Clint and me like a much more controllable, repeatable, precise method.  That led us to today's project - build the jig and shape the rim-contacting surface of the neck on Clint's latest banjo using a radial arm saw.

I acquired a non-operative radial arm saw many years ago for around fifty dollars.  It was missing several pieces, including its safety guard that covers the spinning blade.  Using eBay, I gradually had completed the saw but had never had a need to use it.  I'm so used to doing most of my instrument work on the table saw or bandsaw, I simply never thought about using the radial arm saw, even in cases where it probably would have made more sense.  So today, if all went well, I'd get to use the saw for the first time.

Clint and I studied the problem and designed the jig.  We began crafting it out of some nice cherry that I had left from another project.  The concept is that you would clamp the banjo neck to a flat board in a precise position that would represent the ideal 3-degree angle that the neck makes with the banjo head.  Then you would align the board with the blade of the saw in such a position that the saw can be raised and lowered to chew away the unwanted wood and leave the perfectly-aligned concave surface desired.


The first job with regard to the saw was to turn its blade to a horizontal position.  There's a small detent that enables the user to rotate the blade and motor.  With the help of an on-line users manual, we finally discovered that detent and were able to properly align the blade.  Because of the threatening appearance of a spinning 10" blade, Clint refers to this tool as the "death saw."  We treat it with great respect and caution.

We calculated how high to wedge the neck, crafted a clamp to ensure the rigidity of the neck relative to the base board, and put the jig together.  This process took perhaps two hours.  Then we set the jig up on the saw.  It looks so simple once you've figured it out, but we actually put a considerable amount of time into determining the position of the blade in relationship to a restricting fence on the saw table and other adjustments.  When we were done, the setup looked like this:

The business end of the saw is engaging the end of the neck as shown here:

The jig is moved toward the blade until it is in a position where the blade, when raised or lowered, would eat away perhaps one-sixteenth of an inch of the exposed end of the neck.  It is then raised (or lowered) through the entire height of the heel.  Another small adjustment is made, moving the jig another sixteenth of an inch toward the blade and raising the blade through the height of the heel.  This is repeated until the shape desired is achieved.  And when the cutting is all completed, the base of the neck looks like this:

The notch at the bottom of the neck is the slot into which the flesh hoop and tension hoop will fit when the banjo is assembled.  The neck is upside down in this image, clamped to the jig.  The dark horizontal band is the ebony fretboard being pressed against the jig to ensure that the cut by the saw blade will hold the neck in correct alignment with the rim -- that it won't "tilt" to the left or right.

The bottom line -- We now have a system that we can reuse with consistency and accuracy in shaping the base of our banjo necks.  Let's just hope it's not several months more before you hear another update.

3/9/2017 - Banjo Boys - Chapter 33 - A Trip to Equipment Heaven

It's been well over a year since the Banjo Boys have made their presence known on this informative blog.  Clint got a new job and moved to Chattanooga.  Bob's been continuing to work on various projects.  Clint began to miss his shop time.  Soon, Clint was calling Bob to talk about tools.  It seems that Clint's newly-bought house had a perfect spot for a shop!

The discussions centered initially around table saws since Clint was working on some kitchen cabinets.  The decisions are complex -- Used or new, what brand, how old, what design, what manufacturer, how far away, etc.  He finally acquired a 1981 Unisaw on eBay.

A restored Unisaw like Clint's

 This was a highly-precision tool, extremely rugged, and capable of any job Clint is likely to throw at it.  It was located in Cincinnati and needed to be retrieved.  He called Bob and suggested a road trip.  We were going to where old tools go to die -- C.W. Woods Machinery Co., 3290 Beekman Street, Cincinnati, OH!

Clint drove over Wednesday morning and the team departed from Fayetteville at 6:00 AM.  After breakfast on the road and about 5 1/2 hours on the road, we arrived at C.W. Woods.  It's located in a very industrial section of downtown Cincinnati.  We went into a small house to inquire about Mark Henggeler, who was Clint's contact.  Mark greeted us and offered to show us around before loading the saw into Clint's truck.

We walked down a short driveway into a large industrial building.  We later learned that this building, one of many occupied by the firm, was once a milk bottling plant.  Once we were inside and our eyes adjusted to the light, we saw nothing but heavy machinery in every direction.  There were lathes, milling machines, metal brakes, huge shears, grinders, cutters, saws of every description, drill presses, and CNC machines.  This was some serious stuff!

A small part of C.W.Woods' inventory...

We went through a repair shop, in which several mechanics and electricians were repairing large machines to make them ready for sale to the next users.  Then we walked across the street to a separate building where smaller tools were stored.  Mark had a second Unisaw here and offered to let Clint take the better of any duplicate accessories that were interchangeable to Clint's saw.

The "Homeless" shaper

While in this building we spotted a vintage Model 43-120 Rockwell shaper.  Mark explained that this had been part of a local cabinet maker's shop and that they had bought the entire collection of tools when the gentleman closed his business.  This was the last tool left.  He suggested we might want to make an offer for it.  Clint frantically started checking Websites to see what recent prices had been for similar tools.  He finally offered Mark a fair price and Mark accepted.  The shaper had found a new home!

Loading the truck was pretty painless.  These boys move really big stuff routinely.  They picked up the saw with a forklift and in no time it was lashed down in the truck.  The shaper fit snugly between the extension arms of the Unisaw.  Then it was lashed securely and we were ready to head home.

The trip home was uneventful.  We stopped for a while at a very nice Mexican restaurant, "El Nopal," in Carrollton, KY.  We arrived at Bob's home around 9:30.  Bob's wife, Mary Ann and Bella, the Meads' Cavapoo, were waiting for the grand arrival.  Bella went crazy to see Clint after his many months away.  She remembered him and did a great job as the official greeter.

Reports are that Clint made it home with no issues.  We're all wondering how he intends to get the saw out of his truck and into the shop in one piece!

But Wait...There's More!!!

Just in from Clint himself, this picture.  With the help of a herd of friends and relatives, the Unisaw is now safely in the future shop.  Amen.