Building a Banjo
Aug 03, 2009
My son Will and I are figuring out how to build a banjo. Here's where we are in the process as of 7/31. I'm guessing we're about halfway through it ... Ready to rough shape the neck and work on the fingerboard
My son Will and I are building a banjo. He’s an excellent player and knows what makes a good banjo. I, on the other hand, know how to make things quickly and tend to forge ahead to ‘get things done’ and it has fallen to Will to slow me down and educate me on the fine points of instrument making.
It’s been a spare time project that happens mostly after work as our schedules allow. I’d say we’re about halfway through the first edition, thinking up jigs, trying stuff, and learning a lot as we go.
We have gotten our parts and supplies as well as accurate fretboard layout measurements and a fret cutting miter box from Stewart MacDonald Guitar Supply.
There is a lot of banjo building info online though the variety of styles and approaches to the problem are all different. I’m attempting to add to the online info by documenting our processes on two posts (so far) on our dorset custom furniture blog. There are more construction details and bigger photos there.
More to apppear there as we progress….
And, more info on this site here … This guys got good info too …
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My son Will and I are figuring out how to build a banjo. Here's where we are in the process as of 7/31. I'm guessing we're about halfway through it ... Ready to rough shape the neck and work on the fingerboard
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The jig for gluing up the six piece rings. You can make a pattern and cut them carefully free hand, or, since there are a lot of them, you can make a swing jig for your bandsaw. Because we have one, we cut them on the cnc, but it would probably be just as fast to make the bandsaw jig.
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After truing up a plywood faceplate, we glued the stacked rings to the faceplate and turned it to a +/- 11" outside diameter and applied the first couple of coats of finish while it was still on the lathe
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Next, while it was still on the faceplate, we laid out and drilled the holes for the tensioning ring hardware and the neck bolts
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We then put it back on the lathe, put the final polish to it and parted it off the faceplate. We smoothed the bottom of the ring with hand tools and sandpaper
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After making the templates and the neck blank with the slot for the truss rod, the next step was to cut the angle for the peg head and the curved, angled cut where the neck meets the pot (body) of the banjo.
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This is the jig we made for the curved angled cut.. The pivot is 5.5" from the blade to create the 11" diameter cut.
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At that point, we realized we could add another pivot onto the other end of the cutting jig and set it up to sand the bandsaw cut accurately. Good sound requires a tight fitting neck to body connection.
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Next we added a 3 degree ramp to the neck blank to cut the 3/6ths x 5/8" rabbet where the neck meets the tensioning ring.
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After getting the correct fret layout from the Stewart MacDonald Guiitar Supply website ... www.stew-mac.com ... I cut the inlay pockets on the cnc, though if you were only bulding one banjo, you could probably just as easily and quickly do this step by hand ... It was a lot of fussy CAD drawing and router programming.
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When you're done your banjo, you can have at it like Will did recently at your local Bluegrass festival ... more info here on that ... http://dorsetcustomfurniture.blogspot.com/2009/07/danby-bluegrass-and-old-time-music.html
Comments
what tool are you using to drill the holes for the tensioning hardware? Horizontal mortiser? You should enter the finished piece in our gallery contest. (https://www.finewoodworking.com/contest/wood-turning-contest) I'd say the banjo's turned ring makes it a valid entry!
To bore the holes on the Multirouter, (you could make the same set up for a drill press),we used a .25" router bit that had been commercially sharpened a few times so that the hole it made was less than .25, and about the perfect size for the tensioning hardware. I think we had to redrill the holes slightly larger after boring them on the multirouter so that the fit of the bolts was tight, but not too tight.
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