Monday, December 20, 2010
I've got a little further along on my second banjola, with the fixed bridge now being glued in place. I had built some cam clamps earlier to glue on the bracing, but when it came time to glue the bridge, I found they were too long to fit through the sound hole. So I made up three shorter clamps from some old 1/2" square steel tube I'd bought years ago to use to reinforce necks. Since I've gone on to more sophisticated, and lighter, neck reinforcement methods, this was scrap. I had to buy one 3" x 1/4-20 bolt and one 1 1/2 x 1/4-20 wingbolt for each clamp, so the cost was minimal - about $1.50 each. I could have saved some time and spent $6 or $7 apiece on deep throat C-clamps at Harbor Freight. But these turned out to be functional and the bridge is now glued down.
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Playing Since: 1998
Experience Level: Intermediate
Interests:
[Socializing]
Occupation: Computer Programmer
Gender: Male
Age: 70
My Instruments:
Home built - 2 minstrel fretless, 2 short-scale, others
Favorite Bands/Musicians:
Bob Flesher, Camptown Shakers, Planxty, De Danaan, Deseret String Band, any Old-time, minstrel, string band types.
Classified Rating: not rated
Rate this Member
Profile Info:
Visible to: Public
Created 6/19/2008
Last Visit 2/11/2026
Born in Arizona, I have fond memories of a small-town Colorado childhood and suburban Bay Area (CA) adolescence. I've lived my entire adult life in Utah. A computer programmer by profession, I enjoy working with my hands in wood and metal (although I find mistakes in software much easier to correct). I built my first instrument in 1991, my first banjo (and third overall) in 1999, and have built as of 2013 about 28 instruments, including 21 banjos, mostly from scratch on my own designs. I started trying to learn 3-finger banjo in 1998, found it to be too difficult, developed a two finger style on my own, but finally got the hang of frailing a few years later. Since then I've been slooowly working on improving my technique and repertoire.
Favorite quotes:
"A lot of our culture is lost in our lives-the old stories that were told by mothers and fathers who would go into the bush and then return to tell the others what they had seen. The problem now is that no one goes out and does anything, so we have no stories to tell our children. We have nothing to pass on. In the old days we had to make a musical instrument and sing along to it. Now we just go into town and buy a tape and listen to that." - Mario Mahongo, !Xu Bushman, quoted in National Geographic, Feb. 2001, p 117.
"As a boy, I recall going with Dad to the woods to get the timber for banjo-making. He selected a tree by its appearance and by sounding...hitting a tree with a hammer or axe broadside to tell by the sound if it's straight-grained...As I watched him shaping the wood for a banjo, I learned to love the smell of the fresh shavings as they gathered on the floor of our cabin...When the strings was put on and the pegs turned and the musical notes began to fill the cabin, I looked upon my father as the greatest man on earth for creating such a wonderful thing out of a piece of wood, a greasy skin, and some strings." - Frank Profitt, cited in Foxfire 3, p 124 from Sing Out, Oct-Nov 1963.
