Please add a comment to this blog introducing yourself as you join the group.
23 Comments |
 | Jonnycake White says:
2/4/2011 10:08:28 AM
I'll start. My name is Jon Whitney, I live in Murray, UT (Salt Lake suburb), I'm a computer programmer by profession, married and the father of seven daughters, and I've built 23 stringed instruments (including the two now in progress), 13 of which are banjos and two more of which are banjolas. Three of the banjos were 5-strings converted from commercial pots, none of which I now own. So all of my personal banjos are home built, including all the head tensioning hardware. I did own a "bottlecap" commercial banjo when I was first learning. I like doing unique inlays and I've done some metal etching and I'm trying to develop my metal engraving skills. As a player, I'm a perpetual advanced beginner.
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 | mike gregory says:
2/4/2011 3:47:34 PM
Mike Gregory, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
I was a small boy in a large family. We were encouraged to make our own toys, whenever possible. Made my first fretted stringed instrument at 12 or 13. I'vw made banjo bodies out of things including, but not limited to: parts from a heart/lung machine, from a diesel railroad locomotive, redwood sewing basket, salad bowls, cookie tins, paper plates, aluminum pressure cookers, aluminum frying pans, brass spittoons.
Also the "regular" kind, laminated from strips, and lathe-turned from glued-up blocks.
I'm not a luthier; I'm a cobbler and a guesser!
I've repaired everything from an antique Slingerland to a $3 thrift store banjo to a $4,000 Stelling.
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 | KE says:
2/4/2011 7:32:15 PM
Ken Eigenberg, St. Louis, MO. Wife, two kids, two dogs, five birds, 6 banjos, 6 guitars, etc. I'm non-prolific as a builder. The only product of my hands (no power tools) so far is a grain measure, but I'm happy with it. I've got all materials ready for a gourd banjer as my next project. Pictures in my homepage album banjohangout.org/myhangout/pho...umid=2073
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 | Crowman says:
2/5/2011 1:23:58 PM
Well, I guess I will say a little now. I am new to building banjos, I don't have any wood working experience so it's not been easy. I have been learning bg for about 2 years, got tired of it due to several reasons. Found the mountain banjo post and off I went building my first banjo. Then started looking at old style banjos, old style playing, and clawhammer resources. I have picked up a few books on clawhammer, couple of dvds, and trying to get one of my banjos setup to learn clawhammer. I am working on two projects now, both based on Rudys free pdfs that he has shared. I want to learn all I can about the old style music and banjos. I don't have much time to build right now, but I go to my small shop when I can. Lets make this a good old time building forum folks. We need this group to work together, I want to thank Johnny for setting up this group as I think it's a great idea.
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| mike gregory says:
2/5/2011 11:02:32 PM
Fine by me, if you want this to be an old time building forum. But let's be specific. The most ancient, the oldest time tradition of building banjos, was the people cobbling them together out of whatever little they had: gourds, cheese boxes, whatever. So an old time building forum would be that. If, on the other hand, you mean a forum for building banjos that are ONLY designed for playing what you define as old time music, and are not to be used for styles such as folk, jazz, bluegrass, Celtic, country and/or western, electro-rock, et cetera, then I'm interfering with the group's goal, since I don't care how my banjos get played, as long as people are having fun.
Best current example: See my photos in my Steam Punk file, or see the Youtube video.
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| Jonnycake White says:
2/6/2011 5:55:47 PM
Speaking for myself, I absolutely agree with the idea of using whatever is at hand to build banjos. I don't think we ought to get into 1) playing styles and 2) a specific "right" sound. I subscribe to the statement from Foxfire "...there is so much variety in banjo building that it would seem as though anything goes as long as it 'rings'" (Foxfire 3, p. 124).
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| Crowman says:
2/7/2011 1:59:37 AM
Mike,
I agree with Johnny, and I am new at this banjo business so sometimes the words I use may not be correct. I think we should be able to talk about using anything to make banjos to play any style anyone wants to. What I think is important is to share what works and what doesn't so others will learn from folks like you who have been doing this awhile. I just want to learn to do it myself without having to buy a banjo, from what I have read thats what they used to, they could not afford to buy a banjo, so they made one out of what they had. When they finished it, they played it for whatever style they knew or wanted to. Hope this helps.
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| mike gregory says:
2/7/2011 4:45:15 AM
Thanks for clearing that up.
Let the fun commence!
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 | rudy says:
2/7/2011 5:10:24 AM
Hi All,
Im Rudy (my nom des plume on the web) a.k.a. Randy and hail from the wild cornfields of central Illinois. Ive been building instruments of various types for somewhere around 30 years and playing for around 45 years. Ive always subscribed to the home brew philosophy, and built my first wood guitar after experiencing sticker shock at my local Martin dealer. When I looked at said object of my desires I said to myself Hey, somebody in a factory made that. I think I could do that, too. That was in the pre-internet days, so I purchased a two books (all that were available at the time) and never looked back. I make pretty much everything that I play, with the exception of acoustic guitars, which are so good and relatively inexpensive that I figure why bother? Aside from making instruments, Im retired from my regular job, hang out with my lovely wife, enjoy the idyllic country life with our dog and chickens, play music in a couple of bands with friends, and spend the rest of my free time mowing in the summer and shoveling in the winter. If thats not too much information, you can do a little snooping and find my websites devoted to passing on what Ive figured out in one form or another. See you in the shop!
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 | Tonyfr says:
2/7/2011 9:03:34 AM
Hi, I'm Tony. I never built a banjo yet. I built enough cabinetry and furniture. I have modified guitars and basses in the past. I hope to build a bowed psaltry and a banjo once it gets warm enough to use my equipment.
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 | sport says:
2/12/2011 12:37:27 AM
I am an american priest currently working in the vatican. As I can no longer play basketball I dedicate a few hours a he week to this new passion- the banjo. As an average guitarist, I found the switch fascinating. But I also have some artist bug in me at the moment and inspired by all of your posts on the web I decided to build a banjo myself. I mail ordered some brackets and tuners- adn paid heavy for the shipping- but the saving grace is that there is an excellent wood shop in the seminary where I live (typiclaly to build kneelers, altars, confessionals, etc) and a seminarian from new zealand who is very gifted with wood. He had pity on me after trying to cut a perfectly circle rim out of 3 inch plywood old door. It looked more like a dog bowl than a banjo shell. So, over christmas break we got serious: two banjos! One was made from super hard african wood - old door jamb for the small scale banjo neck and attached it to a tamborine size drum head (okay, i cheated a bit here!) . It sounds nice, easy to play and very portable. While this kept me busy, the new zealander used some "spare" mahogany and made a real nice rim and neck which I am stringer up today- trying to get a hold of some Aquila strings as they are made on this side of the atlantic!. I promise you pictures this week. I love doing the inlays which I am working on at present. The one you see in the photo is the small scale banjo- a silver angel embedded in mohogany fretboard. As for banjo heads in rome- right now discarded vellum paper is holding up fine as immitation calf skin!
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 | dubtom says:
2/14/2011 3:37:47 PM
Hi all, Tommy's the name,from Dublin, Ireland. I'm very much what you'd call a meddler with wood, most of my projects tend to be rough, not intentionally mind, they just turn out that way. I have all the tools but none of the skill, yet it gives the most enjoyment in life. If I spent as much time practicing banjo as I do thinking about and working with wood I'd be a pretty good some day. I'll be cobbling together my first cookie tin banjo in the next while, the idea of paying for nothing but strings appeals,so I intend to try make everything,except the the tin of course.
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| mike gregory says:
2/14/2011 4:47:36 PM
Make your own strings by twisting fishline together. Single strands for thin strings, multiples for thicker. That's what people who lived miles from cities did, in the days when transportation was not as fast.
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 | babaluowu says:
3/1/2011 8:34:18 AM
My name is Josh Lehr. I live in western Kansas. I have wanted to learn banjo for a while but never found a decent banjo for a price I liked, so I did what any decent hillbilly does: I made my own.
I ended up with a nice four-string cigar box. I play guitar, so for now its Chicago tuned.
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| mike gregory says:
3/1/2011 11:36:44 AM
Welcome, babaluowu!
Nice to know that if some rich, beautiful woman INSISTS that I shave, before she'll hire me on as her Boyfriend, there'll be somebody ready to fill in the job of "Big Moustached Improvisational Banjo Maker " while I'm away on business.
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 | fzartvaark says:
3/2/2011 4:15:33 PM
Hello all,
My name is Frank and I'm from Lewiston, NY, a little village near Niagara Falls. I'm a retired military pilot with a lovely wife, 2 boys, 3 grandkids and the required dog and cat. I'm a lefty and while I got the bug to play a banjo in the early 70's, it was in 1977 I bought a kit banjo from stew-mac, threw away the righty neck and made my own at the post Craft shop...Not perfect,but playable...Since then it's become a hobby and I converted an old fiddle to lefty, built a few dulcimers, a pedal steel guitar, a cajun accordion, and now have two open backs in the works and am looking to build a mountain nouveau per Rudy's plans..As the wife says, I'm a professional putzer ( equivalent to a tinkerer I guess) Would also like to build a gourd banjo but I have trouble getting tomatoes to grow...so until I can find the perfect gourd...back burner that..Really impressed with the wealth of information and willingness to share it
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| mike gregory says:
3/2/2011 4:20:26 PM
Frank, you.... Umm, you MADE an accordion?
THat's gotta take a few weekends, ain't it?
Does somebody sell the reeds, or did you have to improvise them?
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 | Steve Jeter says:
3/10/2011 11:52:01 AM
I am almost finished with my first " working" banjo. I made a cigar box one &it was horrible. Making this using a remo hand drum for the pot and shaping the neck mostly like my Carver Tackhead. Im growing gourds this yr. and am looking forward to giving that a shot. Not many skills , just a desire to learn.
Steve
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| Jonnycake White says:
3/10/2011 1:57:31 PM
Steve: Remo hand drum - that ought to work well. Please let us know how your gourds turn out.
PS your avatar photo looks like my Facebook avatar ('cept I don't have a beard). What re-enactment do you do?
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kevinwholmes says:
3/15/2011 1:36:08 PM
I've built, assembled, modified, an retired a number of banjos, including:
1. A Carolina BBQ banjo using portale grill as a pot/head and stock lumber from Lowe's.
2. An "eBanjo", assembled from parts purchased primarily from eBay.
3. Built An openback banjo kit from Grisley Industrial Tools.
4. Restored an 1884 George C. Dobson banjo and a ca. 1904 S. S. Stewart & Sons 4 S Banjo.
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 | primitive fred says:
3/17/2011 5:10:16 AM
Love playing, finding and making weird crancky home-made or modified banjos.
Posted soem videos in the media centre of my band the cutouts where I play a modified 50's Kay. Put a plywood top and a 50's humbucking pickup on it - great fun although not for the faint of heart. Check out:
Search on Picking at my old banjo or cant be satisfied.
Love to hear what you think - good and bad.
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madatcows says:
3/20/2011 11:05:12 AM
I'm Wesley in Austin, Texas.I made my first banjo about 10 years ago after thinking about it for 18 years. I made it fretless just for fun and now I can't imagine playing with frets. My original banjo had some problems so I rebuilt it with a cake pan head. I use some ebony that I buy but all the rest of the wood is free. Oak from pallets and maple and oak from used flooring are my favorites. I like cookie tin banjos too. I have some wild ideas for banjos floating around in my head that keep up at nights. I'm going to try to post something regularly here,I hope the rest of you do the same.
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 | TD_Frailin says:
12/7/2012 6:56:52 AM
I'm Travis and I live in Cornucopia, Wisconsin. I'm a wildlife ecologist by trade, but I've been playing music most of my life. I bought my first banjo in the winter of 2010. I just finished my first homemade banjo project, which I have posted on my blog page and will link to this group page. I am relatively new to the banjo hangout so I'm looking forward to interacting with other banjo folks.
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