June was a slow month for me, partly because of training but more because of some kind of summer cold I picked up at training which kept me at a lower speed for a couple of weeks. I saved my energy for training because I didn’t want to have to restart the whole process. I only have two more sessions and will be done on Wednesday night. I got my little electric car back and am very thankful to have it again so I can pull my little trailer. I picked up a little load of cherry lumber last week from someone just north of Potsdam where the training is, so it saved most of the trip.
There were a couple of custom orders tentatively scheduled for June but they had to be indefinitely postponed due to reported pecuniary exiguousness on the part of the customers. The timing of this ended up fitting well with the time I was sick, so that was a good aspect of the situation. Later in June I had a couple of last minute unexpected custom orders for tenor banjos, and since my agenda was clear I got them made right away. #390 was an 11″ cherry nylgut-strung tenor slot head banjo. These are familiar attributes but I had never combined all of them in one banjo before.
#391 was a left handed ash 10″ tenor banjo.
#392 is a stock 12″ cherry banjo, and #393 is a stock 11″ banjo with a Whyte Laydie/Electric type tone ring. Both these two banjos are en route now by UPS to Bernunzio’s Uptown Music in Rochester. I contacted them in late June to see if they would be willing to try a couple of banjos on consignment, and they replied very promptly. If the arrangement proves to be mutually satisfactory I would like to send them more instruments as time passes. I’m hoping that having a couple of banjos in a large and well known banjo retail store will lead to more people trying them out, and that they may like them when they do. Some people come all the way up here to try banjos, but we’re a long way from almost everywhere.
I’ve just been contacted by someone who placed an order for a custom banjo, so I will start that this week, after I complete a pair of stock A scale banjos that are now in the shop. After that if there are no custom requests I hope to make another A style octave mandolin, and at some point a couple of fiddles. I’m also hoping to get out and camp a bit this month, since I haven’t gone yet this year between one thing and another.