I Digress 3

I apologize for the lousy photo. Low light here today, so it's difficult to hold the camera still enough that it doesn't blur. I was surprised at how dark the 'khaki' came out, but not really upset. I wasn't trying to match the bags to anything else, so the color didn't really matter. Now I know what I get when I use khaki straight out of the jar. (I've mixed it with other dyes in the past). In the future if I'm looking for what I think of as khaki I guess I'll have to go with some species of tan. Anyway, there they are in all their finally finished glory. Now back to musical instruments.

I Digress 2

Here they are, all five of them put together and pre-washed in preparation for dying. The lengths of webbing have been cut for the straps and everything is pretty much ready to go. I'm going to go with khaki and see how they turn out, though they do sorta look cool white. I'll have to make some white ones some day, maybe.

I Digress

 

I know this probably seems strangely random, but I thought it had been too long since my last post and decided to go ahead and put this up here. The short version of the long story is I stalled on the banjo because I needed some good material for the fingerboard and I was waiting for the fret wire to arrive in the mail. Not wanting to sit idle I thought I would make a case for the first cigar box guitar. I've been playing it a LOT and thought it would be nice to have an easy way to transport it. Well, I got the case nearly done (I'll show you next post) but it needed some straps and handles. All the webbing I had for straps and handles was raw and needed to dyed. I've been working on these shoulder bags, which I was also going to dye, so I decided to finish the shoulder bags first and dye the webbing for both the shoulder bags and the guitar case at the same time. So, here's what's what with the shoulder bags.



I'm making five of them at the same time so I can dye them all in the same lot. The straps will be dyed to match. They're from a pattern I made myself based (fairly closely) on a WWII Britsh Mk VII gasmask bag. I have one that I completed a while back in the image to give a better idea of where it's going. I'll throw up another image of the completed bags, snaps, dyed and all, when I get there.

 

One More Little Step Closer

I cut a groove in each piece of the frame for the head to insert into, then assembled it all to make sure everything fits together like it should. The body of the banjo will looks something like this. Sorta like a big Chinese Pa Qua Mirror. I hope it doesn't end up looking too strange.

Building A Rim

   The bodies of banjos are made of either wood or metal. Metal would be no fun 'cause I'd just have to buy a pre-made one. That sort of defeats the purpose of making your own.  As near as I can tell there are two ways to make a wooden one. Either by laminating thin pieces of wood around a wooden form which requires steaming the wood like bending the sides of a traditional acoustic guitar or by gluing straight pieces together into a hexagon and then rounding them on a lathe. If I had a lathe I'd be making flutes and clarinets. The whole reason I'm making strings is because I can't have a lathe in my living room. So I decided to skip the lathe part, but go with the second approach anyway. I made myself a mitre box with he appropriate angles cut in it and went to work.

   I was willing to put up with some facets around the outside, but a hexagon just didn't seem round enough for me, so I decided to go with twelve sides (this time. Next time I might go with 24, but I wanted to see if this was going to work first.)  When I was done carefully cutting all twelve I put them all together to see how they fit. This is what I got.

Another In A Long List . . .

 

. . . of hair-brained ideas. The second cigar box guitar, even though it was turning out fairly well, was causing me a great deal of frustration. I was trying to make a trim piece to go around where the neck inserts into the body and on the third failed attempt (and subsequent waste of expensive/exotic hardwood) I decided to step away from it for a bit. I'm going to go on to something else and will come back to it when the mutual hostility has subsided.
     This next project is going to be a banjo. I know even less about banjos than I do about guitars, so I don't know what I'm thinking 'cept I think it's going to be fun. I spent a fair amount of time going through ideas on what to do about the 'pot'. I thought about using a commercially produced hand drum as a base, I considered stretching my own drum head, as I've done that making taiko drums so it's something I'm familiar with . . . various things were possibilities. But then in my research I ran across some reference and images of banjos with metal heads. They're not common, but they are out there, and for whatever reason the idea appealed to my twisted brain. So a metal head it is.  Now, how to go about it?



    I went on a quest to find something that could be repurposed to be my metal banjo head. I was looking everywhere. Nothing I was finding seemed right. When The Wife Unit asked what I was looking for I said, "Something I can use as a metal banjo head. They look something like this." and showed her an image I had found. She said, "Looks like a pie tin." The thud from me smacking my forehead could be heard a block away. My search continued in the kitchen section of our local dry goods store. I decided to go with a tart pan. The bottom is removable. I'm not sure if I'm going to find a way to use the side segment or not, but the bottom will be perfect .