A few years ago, I had the strong urge to build a banjo, and then promptly moved 700 miles to philly with no access to tools or a job or anything. So the project fell by the wayside.
Now that I've got all my shit together, I thought I would pick the idea back up. Does anyone have any experience building a banjo? I'm not quite understanding the math and theory of why things are built the way they are. I don't want to make a glorified cigar box guitar with a tamborine and a length of board (though maybe eventually a fretless one like that would be cool to fuck around with).
My only issue right now is finding some way to make the body without an actual lathe. I found http://www.popularwoodworking.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/TreadleLathe.pdf which would shows how to build a treadle lathe/saw so I can use it to make the body, (and make some chess sets and other odds and ends afterward). I have zero experience with turning so I'll probably end up breaking the first few pieces.
Here's a site with some free 20x30 blueprints and a bunch of info I'm thinking of using -- http://www.bluestemstrings.com/pageBanjo.html
http://www.songofthegreatlakes.com/banj.htm is another banjo build.
I've gone down a days-long youtube rabbit hole with diy banjo builds - Everything from finely crafted art pieces to making it from stained, old barn wood. I've also been thinking over the type of wood to use and where to source it from so it will last as long as possible, so the neck doesn't bend, and so forth.
Before I go deeper into this: In your opinion am I looking too hard at this project? I've seen cigar box guitars, baking pan guitars, and tambourine banjos that sound alright but don't quite have the professional look I want. All I have are hand-tools at the moment, but lots of patience and experience woodworking in a past life.
Thoughts? Ideas? Advice?
I don't know anymore where exactly I read this, but I think the wooden circles are not made with a lathe, but by glueing pieces of veneer together around a round template. This might not be for banjos though, but for actual toms.
You might also find the Watson & Bailey plans helpful. Never studied them myself, since I always was more interested in the mandolin/mandola plans, but I think they're pretty in depth.
http://web.archive.org/web/20081015172010/http://www.watsonbailey.com/plans/
This thread is now shitty luthier General.
>>948635
That neck doesn't fit it at all.. it looks kind of like an icemans retarded cousin. How's it sound though?
>>948654
Friend made that one, limited tools. He has to raise the bridge a bit before we hear it.
This is what im working on. It is a semihollow with construction similar to the airline guitars. Going to buy a couple good sheets of wood tomorrow to remake it.
>>948633
Holy shit those plans are great. I'll add them to my steadily growing list of stuff and links.
As far as I've been able to find when looking up stuff for this project, there are two types of banjo builds people show on the internet -- A build using a lathe and a build using a tamborine.
>>948633
>>948718
I stand corrected. Just found a third way, with a router jig
http://pdgood.us/drumshed/koko.html
Also found another banjo build pdf for a kit that may guide one along
http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/a-banjobuilding/a-banjobuilding.pdf
And here's a bunch of random links from some dude
http://www.banjowizard.com/music.html
>>948727
So I'm going with the Koko jig. Found a YouTube clip of somebody building a racktom with it - the jig was designed for building drums, but the banjo pot is like a big drum so I'm not worried.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=d_Y7uYotylI
More incoming as I build, unless no-one cares.
>>949485
Really interested to see how it will turn out! Please keep us updated.
Op, have you considered a Tahitian banjo/ukulele? It's carved from a single piece of solid wood (or you can laminate different pieces into a block). Carve out a bowl and cover it with a soundboard.
OP back for an update.
Bought 8ft of Red Oak from a big box store and the shit to do the jig. My router is on the way. I started by doing measurements by hand because I was in linux and couldn't find a program to model what I wanted that I knew how to use. (how hard is it to make a 24 sided polygon in inkscape, gimp, photoshop, or corel draw? The programs allll crashed and now I know better.)
I took 4 hours and hand-calculated everything, marked, and went back to double-check my math using sketchup (after booting into windows), and low and behold I was wrong. I am 3/64 in off on the long sides of my polygons, and 1/64 in off on my short sides.
I need to sand it down and begin again, but now I have the right measurements. No pictures yet because I am a failure.
>>948633
I made a bowl once, about the diameter of a banjo, on a lathe. You'd need a backing piece you could remove...
Also make a crummy banjo once using a cookie tin (like the one's at Xmas) as the resonating body, with a through-body neck.
I'll give you a 4th way to make the hoop... steam and bending.
