As I have blogged before, even knowing better, I went about running my grain directing for the axe banjo the wrong way.

 It has cracks, it still sounds ok but it’s time to replace it. Rather than just do the same thing again I’m planning a hollow body electric tub. One of the pickups I am making the other is a guitar lipstick pickup.

Often on banjos the pickup is peizo. The peizo pickup is expected to pick up the instruments vibrations that produce the sound rather than through the air like a microphone. These are ceramic discs mounted to a conductor and they are active pickups, meaning that they need power usually in the form of a 9 volt battery.

I plan to make a passive pickup that will pick up the instruments vibrations through a suspended coil and magnet mechanically coupled to the tone ring. It will require no power and the initial tests indicate that it will provide a clean natural acoustic sound.

The reason that I am adding the lipstick pickup is for an unnatural banjo sound more like and electric guitar. I also have a passive overdrive to get a gritty sound if desired. (For fun)

The picture is a 3D representation of the tub that I plan to start making Soon.

I am thinking of purchasing some hickory banjo tub blanks and creating a tub based on my style that will use a traditional 11' banjo head. This will retain the 9 1/2" active area by using a new style tone ring. I am debating this so that I can production-ize my hickory banjos. I was planning the tail section Steinberg tuners with no peg heads. Is anyone out there interested in my hickory banjos?

Today I want to show a good picture and talk about my inlays for the hammer banjo.

 It’s a long neck so I wanted markers for when played as along neck and when a capo is applied. What seems to be extra round dot inlays, are to help with where inlay markers would be for when a capo is applied to the third fret.  The hammer inlays are for where the inlay markers should be on a long neck and also where the two sets of markers would overlap.

For the markers on the side of the neck, I added additional 12th fret double markers. One set of double markers for the 12th fret normally and another for when there is a capo on the third fret.

I did this for me, believing that I will mainly play this banjo with a capo.

The markers commercially available for the sides of the neck, from Stewart MacDonald, were either black or white markers. I didn’t want black markers on my white edging so I made my own. (They also had mother of pearl and such but I didn’t want that either.)

My markers are hickory. I turned down some hickory to 3/32” in diameter, drilled matching holes, bonded the “hickory toothpicks” into the holes and trimmed them flush. I used a new Exacto blade to get a clean flush trim.

To me the natural wood side markers have absolutely the best look for my banjos.

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.

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.

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 made an MP3 comparing the sound differences between the Hammer and Axe banjo's. Remember I am a novice player so this is just to compare the sound of the banjo's and not to critique my playing abilities. :) In the near future I will try and get a banjo player with a little more skill and a better recording setup.

This is a link to where I have the MP3 uploaded on Banjo Hangout. http://www.banjohangout.org/myhangout/music.asp?id=67415  (There is a link to Banjo Hangout's home page on my Resources page.)
 
I dont have the ability to upload and play MP3's from my web site yet so I will use my account at the Banjo Hangout for now.

Bill

Maybe I should back up and just list what I did different on my two banjo's and why,

Both banjo's are hickory. I had the hickory and thought it would make pretty banjo's. Also, then I could theme the banjo's. Hammer and axe handles are hickory the axes and hammers would make neat inlays and such.

The Hammer was first. It is a Pete Segar style long neck. why? Why not I was making it and I could always play it with a capo.

The Axe was the second. It is a standard length bluegrass-ish style banjo.

I sparred both necks so I didn't have to have an adjustable truss rod. The spar would keep the necks from bowing under string tension.

I removed the 5th string tuner peg from the neck. I didn't like playing around it. For the Hammer banjo I submarined the 5th string under the neck. For the Axe banjo I used Steinberger tuners in the tail piece.

Both banjo's have the head tension reachable from the outside of the banjo. I did this by purchasing 10 1/8" heads from Elderly music and making 12" OD tension rings that accommodated socket head cap screws, stainless of course.The Hammer has 16 bolts the Axe has 24 bolts just so they would be different from one another.

Both are non traditional resonator banjo's. The Hammer has a hand formed aluminum bell resonator rubber mounted at three points. The Axe has a modified commercial splash cymbal mounted through the center as the bell resonator.

I incorporated a custom push-pull arrangement to adjust the neck angle. this places the adjustment nut on the outside of the tub so that I didn't have to remove the resonators to adjust the action.

I also widened the string pitch and necks because I have fat fingers and that makes them easier for me to play faster.

I thought that I was being innovative when designing all of this into my banjo's only to find out that most of this has been accomplished over the years by different manufacturers. O-well this is my interpretations and design. I think they are interesting and they have been a blast to make.

what do I hope to accomplish with my blog???? It is strictly for my entertainment, hopefully yours too. I am constantly searching for guest bloggers in the business to give us some encouragement. (again thanks Roger Siminoff - our first guest)

The first design element I wanted to talk about was how I planned to eliminate the truss rod. I sparred the neck with a bar of 1/8th” aluminum.

I did this by splitting the neck wood in half then bonding each half on either side of the aluminum, I varied from traditional adhesives used in banjo building and went with a polyurethane glue. The glue used was Gorilla glue that they sell almost everywhere these days.

Using an orbital sander, with 60 grit paper, I scored the aluminum to get a good bond. After scoring, I cleaned the aluminum with lacquer thinner and damped the wood just before applying the adhesive. Dampening the wood will aid the polyurethane glue to cure more evenly.

My theory was I could grind the neck flat before finishing the fret board and the neck would always stay flat due to the aluminum sparr. It would also leave a unique aluminum stipe down the back of the neck (coolness factor) 

Notice all five peg holes in the peg head. I don’t like working around that peg on the neck when I play. The grove is to bond a brass tube beneath the fret board for submarining the 5th string.

I will add more soon. 

But just for a note: I thought that sparring the neck was innovative and all me. I later found out that Martin Guitars often bonds a square tube beneath the fret board for just the same reason. But they didn’t get the cool aluminum stripe.