It’s amazing to me how crude a musical instrument can get away with being and still produce a pleasing sound in the hands of a skilled musician. If you type in cookie tin banjo or cigar box guitar into U tube you will get an idea of what can be done with very little…and indeed how our ancestors probably made music.
Yes this is the cue for yet another project…..I have always had a yen to try my hand at banjo….and hearing the results of others efforts at construction…I decided to chuck together a ‘Cookie Tin Banjo’. I have a large stock of Australian Jarra hardwood kicking about so I decided to sculpt a neck from that…….poor move……the stuff is soooo hard that virtually all tools bounce off it (okay so no truss rod will be needed) and boy do you get vicious splinters from it.
I’ve got it roughed out after two evenings of hard graft…note to self….don’t experiment with lovely looking hardwoods you’ve never worked with before unless you have adequate tools!
I have found however some fabulous software for calculating fret spacing, and better, printing out a ‘fret board’ on paper that can be stuck with Spraymount to the blank finger board then the fret slots cut through it with a ‘Gents saw’. This eliminates all the tedious marking and checking….result!
http://www.topshareware.com/Fret-Calculator-download-40998.htm
I will post photos of the beastie soon.
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