The Banjo Boys...11/22/2012

Some readers may remember my foray into the world of cigar box guitars.  That effort resulted in the instrument shown above.  Now, there's a new adventure in the works.  It all started one day when my friend Clint Rankin mentioned that his wife, Sarah, wanted to learn to play the banjo.  I said, "You ought to build her one."  That started the ball rolling.

Jenes Cottrell in the 1970s with
one of his turbine ring banjos

An internet search for various terms like "home built banjo" and "building a banjo" led us to a little-known character from the 1970s named Jenes Cottrell.  According to the West Virginia encyclopedia, "Traditional musician and craftsman Jenes Cottrell (September 14, 1901-December 7, 1980) was descended from the earliest settlers of Clay County. Known for their farming and trading, the Cottrells also worked with wood. During the arts and crafts revival beginning in the 1960s, Jenes Cottrell became one of the best-known practitioners of the old ways. He made toys, rolling pins, chairs, and canes, and he put in chair bottoms of woven wood splits. He had a fine foot-powered, spring-pole lathe which he used to demonstrate his skill at festivals throughout West Virginia and beyond. He drew people as flies swarm to sugar. Somewhere along the way Cottrell had begun to make banjo rims using aluminum torque converter rings from 1956 Buick transmissions. He quickly became known for making and playing banjos."  

The turbine ring

We then found a Website of a young man named Chris Dean who had researched Cottrell's banjos and built one of his own "Dynaflow banjos."  Then we ran across some YouTube videos of a fellow who had built such a banjo and had recorded the construction sequence and some of his playing.  Clint and I were intrigued.  If we could find the transmission part - the "1st turbine ring" from a 1953-1958 Buick Dynaflow (no easy task) - it might be fun to try building one of these instruments.  Then Monty Love joined the crowd.

Chris Dean's finished banjo

Clint is a Pit Bull in an internet quest.  Within a day, he located a junkyard in New Jersey that had a pile of Dynaflow transmissions.  Within a couple more days, there were three turbine rings on their way to Huntsville.  Watch for progress reports over the next few weeks.

We are officially the "Banjo Boys."