The bridge on the hammer banjo is actually made from a deer antler. Here is the antler info for the tree hugger in all of us. The deer was not harvested for its rack, it was road kill. Although unfortunate for the deer and the vehicle it encountered it gave us a nice piece of unique material to work with.

The antler makes a good bridge because it is important for the bridge to be light weight yet rigid. The strength of the material lets the bridge be carved to quite a thin piece making it light. The lighter the bridge the less it dampens the string vibrations. Thus more of the vibrations are transferred to the banjo head.  It’s also just a neat conversation piece. I also made the fifth string guide from the antler.

I like to have five legs on my bridge to transfer the energy directly beneath each string.  Traditionally banjo bridges have three legs and I’m sure there is some science behind it. I just can’t get over the idea that somehow the five legs, one for each string, should even out the strings making each sound more distinctive. I do believe that I can hear the difference. I can’t explain what is different but I can say my preference is the five legged bridge.

The bridge on the axe banjo is made from black walnut. Again here is the black walnut info for the tree hugger in all of us. The black walnut was not harvested from a living tree. The walnut tree had fallen on my property, possibly in a storm, and I had harvested the fallen tree for firewood. I scavenged one of the sticks of wood to make the bridge from.

The walnut also transfers the energy well and is a more traditional banjo bridge material. Having a more abundant source of material, the fear of scraping the part was less so I daringly made the walnut bridge thinner than the antler bridge. Thinner means lighter means more volume from the strings.

Also I spaced the strings at 0.5”.  Traditionally the strings are at about 0.375” to 0.425”. This is done just for me. I have fatter fingers and for me, this small spacing difference makes the banjo easier to play. I understand that Gold Tone also has models with wider string spacing for people like me.

FYI    
    I plan to attend the Bela Fleck and the Flecktones show at the Michigan Theater April 19. They have multiple Grammies for Jazz albums. Go to utube and check them out. Jazz on a Banjo.. ultra cool.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I88hWxaWgws
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK2XRcVUc5o&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPBmyFsfyPc&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=AVGxdCwVVULXe6lYhms3jbtiD3K_MIulE9

At one time you could order a 1 1/8" thick one piece bent wood rim / tub blank that would finish at 7/8 thick from Stewart Mac. I found out who makes them. Its Chris Mroz at http://extremewoodbending.com/home/aboutpuretimber.html. These are not thick enough to make my rims from. I need to finish at 1 3/8" thick.

But if your a builder it might be fun to try one of thier rims out.  He gets about $15 extra per inch foot of wood. A rim / tub blank ends up around $250

For the Tekies here is how its done.
He takes a ten (10) foot long 1 1/8" thick board, saturates it with water (probably in an autoclave under vaccume) then compresses it lenghtwise to eight (8) foot long. Then streaches /relaxes it back to nine foot (9). This breaks all of the grain bonds. As long as the wood is still wet it is plyable like a thick sheet of rubber. At this point it can be COLD formed! The wood regains its bonds when it dries at whatever shape and retains that shape. 

Pretty cool hu? It is a patented process so with this information don't try and sell your own cold formed rims. Chris will win the lawsuit.

Why does this work? 
Compressing the wood on inside when bending a rim is the difficult part. This wood is precompressed allowing the inside to compress a little more and the outside to streach. Science can be cool.

Just added more links. check out our friends

The Cad application that I use for design is ProE Wildfire 4.0. It is a full 3D parametric design package. here is a jpeg of an image of the axe banjo

I added the +1 recommend this on Google button.
if you like my blog you can click the +1 button and recommend my site on Google. This will help others find my site and help me generate traffic for my site.
thanks,
Bill

I would like to apologize for not posting any blogs for the last few weeks. I have been tied up with other obligations.

My schedule will return to normal next week and I will be back to several blogs a week.