Things With Strings

Before I get onto anything banjo related, I have to say how sad it was to hear of the death of David Bowie this morning. One of life's true originals, the world has lost one of it's most colourful characters. In part 1 I said I'd made a big mistake that would be revealed when I took the clamps off. When I cut the scarf joint, I somehow (goodness knows how) made a mis-calculation on where to start the cut. I think it's because I was trying to build in a margin for error, so didn't follow my drawing, and instead of a margin for error I just got an error. Pretty embarrassing for a guy with a degree in mathematics eh? Anyway, here is the unclamped piece, prior to clean-up. clamps removed Did you spot it? The headstock is too short (aaarrrggghhhh). Here is a close-up. the stubby headstock However, I realised after a few minutes of cursing, that it's actually not too bad at all, because correspondingly, the neck part is too long, and the headstoc...

Buoyed up by yesterdays scarf joint jig success and the cutting of the banjolele neck , I decided to start on the banjo neck. First off, I made an "improvement" to the scarf joint jig. A problem with the previous one was that because the part that was cut off was unclamped, there was a bit of tear out. So I adapted the jig in order that I could clamp the workpiece in two places. Like this... adapted scarf joint jig Yeah, I know what you are thinking, "he's going to cut his clamps in half". There is clearance though. clearance for the blade? However, I made two downright stupid errors! The first, and most stupid error was that I placed the clamp nearest the blade the wrong side of the cut. Duh! And the second was that I shouldn't have cut all the way through the fence, because I ended up having to place a wedge in it to prevent the clamp squeezing it shut. Anyway I did spot the second error before making the cut, but not the first one, ...

Continuing the banjolele neck I started yesterday (link here ) I couldn't wait 24 hours, so after 23 hours I took the clamps off. Actually, the reason was that I needed the clamps for my banjo neck, and I figured 24 hours was just an arbitrary number anyway and that if days were 23 hours instead of 24 it would have said 23. Anyway I digress. I hadn't got the clamping 100% right, because although the joint was good, the head was very slightly askew, so I cleaned it up on the table saw. I will sand the top level though before fixing the fingerboard. Here how it looks now. The scarf joint is very hard to see, it starts somewhere close to the fold on the cloth that the neck is laid on. I have to say that I'm fairly happy with it at this point. the neck after gluing the scarf joint

Delayed first by bird table, and then by the flu (not bird flu), I wanted to get back to some building. I took some measurements from one of my son's ukulele's and drew up some sketches for the banjolele in order to get the dimensions for the neck, and got to work on the build. First off, I cut off and cleaned up a piece of mahogany that I had. It's probably not real mahogany, just something in the same family. The piece I cut off was about 19" x 2.5" x 1.5" cleaned up neck blank Next, I made a jig for the table saw that would allow me to cut a scarf joint at a 15 degree angle for the headstock. I wanted this cut to be clean, so I put a decent Freud blade in the table saw. It actually turned out pretty good. 15 degree scarf joint jig Then it was time for the glue-up. This was a bit tricker than it looked, as it really wanted to move around when it was clamped, but I managed it in the end. neck and head clamped together Another 24 ...