March began with a batch of four banjos. #438 was a cherry 11″ custom banjo with a Little Wonder tone ring ordered by the customer from Rickard Banjos, a slot head and a tunneled 5th string.
#439 was a walnut 11″ tenor banjo with curly maple trim and nylon strings, tuned as a baritone ukulele.
Banjos 440 and 441 are stock banjos, shown on the Banjos page.
The next batch comprised three custom banjos and a custom neck. First was banjo #442, a cherry C scale that was built to the stock design except that it has a 1/4″ brass tone hoop instead of a wood tone ring.
#443 was a left handed 12″ yellow birch slot head. Slot heads are the least odd looking way that I know of to make a left handed banjo, since as far as I know no one makes a regular 5th string tuner in left handed orientation.
#444 is a 12″ walnut banjo with a Dobson heel, a bound two layer fretboard, a round brass tone hoop, and a slot head. This one is slightly unusual because the customer specifically wanted the number 444, and ordered the banjo because that number was coming up.
The neck was a 6 string guitar style neck fitted to an old pot for the same customer I made a neck for at the end of last month. The
Banjos #445-447 were stock banjos and are shown on the Banjos page.
I’ll be building two custom banjos early in April, and then will move on to the archtop guitar bodied octave mandolin if no more custom work comes in in the meantime. I’ve written this a little early, as I have completed the work I had planned for March, and am about to get a head start on April work. Spring is here, though it’s still fairly cold a lot of the time.