Jonnycake White - Posted - 12/12/2016:  08:27:53

This may be my fastest build ever.  I carved out this neck from a piece of poplar many years ago, one summer afternoon when I hadn't done any building for a long time and was jonesing for a fix.  Originally it had two geared tuners installed.  Then Saturday afternoon I made some modifications to install it on a cookie tin pot.  I installed three friction pegs and fishing line strings, an ebony nut, and threw on a bridge that I had to sand down to remove four string notches and put in three.  It has a 16 1/2 inch scale length with frets marked with ballpoint pen ink (a mistake, as the ink ran under the finish).  It is finished with beeswax, applied with a heat gun (leaving one scorch mark).  It actually plays and sounds OK.  I took it to the local Dickens Festival for a couple of hours to see if I could sell it, but I got no offers on it. 

front view.

peghead back

Side view

 

Westvon - Posted - 12/12/2016:  09:08:34

Cool! A cookie tin banjo, and hubcap banjo, and a pressure cooker banjo that Sammy Shelor's grandfather made for him when he was a youngin. What else is there available?

Jim Yates - Posted - 12/12/2016:  10:57:51

Sometime in the seventies, during my school teaching years, a fellow named Rick Avery came to our school through Mariposa In The Schools and showed my kids how to make a Bleach Bottle Banjo.  He used nylon fish line for strings and eye bolts for tuners.

A few years later, my kids were in Beavers (Jr. Cub Scouts) and the leader had them making homemade instruments.  She asked me if I would bring my guitar and lead a sing-along so they could show off their instruments to their parents.  I figured it wasn't really fair to play an expensive Martin guitar while the kids were playing instruments made from bottle caps, elastic bands and old coffee cans, so I decided to adapt Rick's idea for a bleach bottle banjo so it could use steel strings.  I also made a washtub bass for one of the kids to use.  Since the bleach bottle wouldn't support steel banjo strings, I used a cookie tin much the way Jon did.  The neck was a broken hockey stick rounded with a Stanley Surform rasp.

A couple of decades later, I played it in an Unusual Instruments workshop at the Mariposa Folk Festival.  It still had the same strings that had been on for over 20 years.

Edited by - Jim Yates on 12/12/2016 10:59:49

Cookie Tin Banjer

 

 

 

davidppp - Posted - 12/12/2016:  12:06:39

About 25 years ago, when my very musical son was about 4, he loved to strum and pluck anything within reach. He had the dirtiest, greasiest fingers I'd ever encountered. So I made something (shown below) for his very own. As he got older, I added (very playable) store-bought instruments that were child-size appropriate.

Godiva chocolates tin banjo

Godiva chocolates tin banjo - 2