In the first few days of April I put the finish on banjos 282, 283, and 284, and wood topped banjo #4, but I got sick for about a week and didn’t get them set up and listed for sale till near the middle of the month. They are shown on the Banjos page. During the rest of the month I worked on two more banjos and an octave mandolin.

First was octave mandolin #6, made from walnut with ebony fretboard and bridge. It’s a stock instrument but was made to order and shipped to the customer on completion. If an instrument is within the range of what I normally build as stock I will take it back if the customer finds it’s not what they wanted once they get it. I haven’t had one of these in stock for a year or maybe longer, but I hope to make another one sometime this spring.

My only custom banjo for April was #285, a 10″ C scale with a very wide nut, a slot head, and a tunneled 5th string. This was the first time I have made a short scale banjo with a tunnel, so that was fun. It’s made from curly maple and ebony.

Banjo #286 is another mahogany C scale made from the remaining casket wood that was too short to make regular size necks. It’s shown on the Banjos page. I’m hoping to be more productive in May.

This month was a busy one in the shop. Banjos 273-277 were all stock banjos and were completed in the first half of the and are all listed on the Banjos page. It’s nice to have a cello banjo in stock again after almost a year without one. Banjo #278 was an all black banjo, made from ash with Fiebing’s Leather Dye and an ebony fretboard.

Banjo #279 was a 12″ curly maple with walnut trim. This banjo and #276 are the first two I have made with some curly maple I bought in Tupper Lake last summer. It’s got nice color variation in it and I have enough to build quite a few instruments.

Banjo #280 was one where the customer sent all the hardware and a piece of drum shell and I made the other wooden parts and put it all together. It has various features that are not what I usually build, but it will help me to avoid paradigm paralysis, which is something I used to hear about from a friend who is now late. This banjo was shipped unfinished, as this customer likes to do his own finishing.

Banjo #281 is a curly maple 11″ with a tunneled 5th string. This was my first time making a fretboard with a compound radius. This one goes from 12″ at the nut to 16″ at the heel, so it’s not drastic, but it was a good experiment and now I will feel able to make these if asked again.

I’ve got a wood topped banjo, two 12″ wood tone ring banjos and an 11″ slot head that are all awaiting setup and should be completed sometime this week. I put Tru Oil on them yesterday while we had a north wind so I could do it in the attic without the fumes getting blown back inside. My plans for April include an octave mandolin that is spoken for, and some more stock banjos and other instruments depending on what the custom schedule shakes out to be.

Early in the month I made a mahogany squareneck resonator guitar and when it got warm enough I put the finish on that and the archtop guitar and chicken-head fiddle that had been waiting. They are all shown on their respective pages. My first custom project for the month was a practice koto, the same width and curve as a real koto but only two feet long instead of six or so. I strung it with string trimmer line. I have no knowledge of kotos, but this one didn’t sound like much. On the other hand it wasn’t required to be mellifluous, as it was just for practicing without having to carry the big one around.

My last custom projects were two necks, one a tenor for an ODE pot and the other a 5 string for a small Gibson pot. The customer for the 5 string sent me a lot of inlay to install on the fretboard, and also a pre-inlaid peghead overlay. The tenor was a nice simple design.

Along with the two necks I also made a C scale banjo out of some of the casket-offcut mahogany that I still have left. It’s shown on the Banjos page. Right now I’m getting a couple of stock banjos ready for finish and should have them listed on Monday. There’s been a little flurry of four stock banjo sales in the past week, so I’m catching up a bit on that. I have four custom banjos on the agenda for March, and a couple more stock banjos. I haven’t had an 8 banjo month in over a year.

I’ve mostly caught up on work in the house, though there are still some details to be completed. The door trim is now all in place, except for the frame around the attic ladder cover. I finally got the bookshelves built that fit between the studs above the bed in my room, so I could unpack all the boxes of books in the attic. It’s really nice to have easy access to them again. In the kitchen I got the drawers and cupboard doors made that go under the sink and its counter. It’s much nicer to have more things in drawers so they’re easier to get out. This was my first time using full extension drawer slides and I am now a believer and will use them for any future drawer projects.

I spent the first 17 days of January on a batch of 3 banjos. #269 was a walnut 12″ with internal resonator, Whyte Laydie-type tone ring, and a slotted peghead.

Banjos 270 and 271 are stock instruments shown on the Banjos page. In the last couple of weeks of the month I made a cherry chicken head fiddle and a cherry archtop guitar. It was too cold to do any finishing at the end of the month so they are still waiting. In the meantime I have been working on a mahogany squareneck resonator guitar. All of these and a custom banjo neck will be ready for finishing in a couple of days, and I have a couple more necks and a banjo for custom work in February. If time permits I’d also like to also build a flattop acoustic guitar and an octave mandolin in the remainder of the winter, and another fiddle or two. I’ve been out of stock of those things for much too long.

In the house I’ve continued to make a little progress. I got the area under the stairs enclosed, and now we have a coat closet at the high end, a space for the flour and oats barrel on a cart in the middle, and a small cupboard at the bottom and the very top. I’ve also been building some bookshelves so we could unpack most of the 20+ banana boxes of books that were in the attic since August.

The first completed work this month was a couple of banjos. #267 was a custom banjo, made mostly in a familiar pattern but with a narrower nut width, and using bubinga and wenge for all the parts except an ebony fretboard. This was my first time using either of these woods. This banjo has a wood tone ring but weighs more like a banjo made from my usual woods with a Whyte Laydie tone ring.

Banjo #268 is a 12″ walnut banjo with a Whyte Laydie tone ring and is shown on the Banjos page.

The guitar is now completed, after a long wait for the inlay to be delivered. I will start a new policy for 2023 that I won’t start on a project until all the materials are in the workshop. Since I don’t cut inlays my customers who want inlay have to order it, and I have had repeated experiences with orders from one company where people often buy complicated inlays being delayed. This guitar is my first dreadnought and I will plan to build more at some point. The customer requested brass ammunition shells as fret markers. He sent the shells to me and I cut the bottoms off. I could have set the shells under epoxy but the customer preferred to have them flush, with the lettering uncovered. This leaves them feeling bumpy, but it’s not very noticeable when playing.

My last project for the month was a new neck for a used pot assembly that I was sent by a customer. I had made a neck for this pot before but the customer wanted a new neck with a tunneled 5th string to replace it. The neck is made from hard maple with a Blackwood Tek fretboard and overlay.

I’m planning to build a lot more instruments in 2023 than I did in 2022. This was my least productive year in a while, though that was mostly because of spending so much time repairing the house, building the workshop and moving. I’m still working on things here but the bulk of the jobs are done. This month I finally built a large cabinet in the kitchen, a folding counter above the chest freezer and some other shelves. There are still more cupboards and shelves to build, but we’re able to put more things away in an orderly way instead of in totes on the floor.

The owner of last month’s neck kindly sent me this picture after reading that I had forgotten to take a picture of it after installation on the pot.

November was a bit odd in the shop. I started off working on my first dreadnought size guitar, and got the soundbox completed and the neck blank made before grinding to a stop because the inlay the customer wants is backordered from his supplier.

The first completed project was an unfinished neck, which the customer is going to fit to the pot. He sent measurements and I built the neck to them as best I could. The tuners were requested by the customer. I’ve never used ones with such thick string posts before. The neck is walnut and has a zebrawood fretboard with rosewood binding.

The other neck is fitted to a Gibson trapdoor banjo pot. It is made from curly maple with a rosewood fretboard. The customer supplied the inlay and I installed it.

Both these necks were actually not completed till early December. My plans for the rest of this month include a custom banjo, perhaps the completion of the guitar if the inlay turns up, currently 5 banjo rims to be made and fitted to flanges and tone rings, and maybe building a stock guitar.

I’m also still working on stuff inside the house. The last outdoor job was installing a small mini split heat pump for weather that’s not cold enough for the wood stove. I ended up getting one I could install myself since the person who was going to do it all summer and fall never did. It went in the day before Thanksgiving, and we have used it a few times and expect to use it more in the spring. This was my first time with this kind of job but it wasn’t too hard. The pictures are from before I wrapped the lines into a bundle.

Once it got too cold to hang laundry outside I made a “too big to fail” clothes rack for indoor drying. It’s about 6 feet long and 6-1/2 feet high.

In the latter half of October and first few days of November I made one custom neck and three stock banjos. The custom neck was to fit a Deering pot. The owner brought the banjo up to have the neck fitted after I got it put together. It’s curly maple with a curly ash peghead overlay and a hop-hornbeam fretboard. The fretboard has a 12″ radius. I forgot to take pictures of the neck after it was installed on the pot. Usually I do that before shipping, but in this case there was no shipping to be done.

The workshop is coming along well. I finally got the OSB sheets applied to the underside of the roof and in the corner behind the big shelf so now the insulation and vapor barrier are covered. I put up scraps on the underside of the ceiling joists along both walls, so now I have lots of spaces to store flattish things. I’ve still got a ways to go to get organized, but it’s getting better.

I also bought a used lathe recently. This is the first real lathe I’ve had, and it’s much better than the ShopSmith for turning rims. I had been thinking of buying something like this once I got settled in to the shop, but this one came up used at a good price and was only about 90 miles away. The legs are too short for me, so when I want to use it I clamp it to the table saw top.

Currently I’m beginning work on two banjo necks and a guitar. The guitar will be my first dreadnought size, so that will be fun. It should be easier to bend the sides since the waist is not as pronounced as most of the guitars I’ve built. I’m hoping to get these done by the end of the month, but with house woodwork still ongoing I am not as fast as I hope to become later.

The shop is still coming along incrementally. I hope to have the insulation all covered with OSB panels by sometime in November, and to keep adding more shelves so I can be slightly less disorganized. From mid-September on I began working slowly on a couple of custom necks and three stock banjos, and now this first batch is completed. I will have a small batch to build here in the latter half of October, and should be back to a regular monthly post about what I’ve been making.

The first neck to be completed and set up is a 24.6″ scale length cherry neck with Blackwood Tek trim, mounted on an ODE aluminum pot. It is my first Buckbee style peghead, and my first experience with this pot style. The customer also ordered the armrest. He likes to do his own finishing, so this was shipped unfinished but set up, as shown here.

The other custom neck was a 17 fret tenor for a vintage Vega large size pot. This one was made from African mahogany and rosewood. It has my usual Tru Oil finish.

The rest of this batch was three 11″ cherry banjos with different tone rings and trim woods. They are banjos 261-263 and are shown on the Banjos page. I’ll make a couple of 12″ banjos next, along with another custom neck.

I don’t have any instruments to post this time but figured I should make an update on the state of things, such as it is. I brought the last load of lumber and things up in the bus on the 26th of August, and now we are officially here. I misunderestimated (to use a once-popular but now sadly neglected word) how long it would take to get the shop up and running in the new building.

I got the foam and subfloor installed and put in most of the rockwool in the walls and ceiling, and have begun putting up the vapor barrier and covering the walls with OSB, but there is still a lot more to do. More than half of the outlets are hooked up, and all of the lights, but I have not yet been able to unpack a lot of things, and while I have found most of the tools I need while looking for other things I have lost track of some of them again. I got the table with the vises and the clamp rack into place, so that part is ready to use

The stationary power tools are now all reassembled and ready to work, and my plan is to start by making a couple of armrests and a rim this week while also (I hope) completing the wall covering so I can hang more things up where I can see them, instead of them all being in random boxes. I”m hoping to start building banjos and necks next week. I had hoped to be further along by now, but that’s life. When I first moved everything into the shop building there was not room to walk through most of it, so things are getting slowly better.

We had a spell of nice weather from Wednesday to today, and I took advantage of it to get the addition built on the foundation piers on the side of the house. It began to rain as I was installing the last piece of metal roofing, so that worked out well. Tomorrow I’ll close in the end walls and then I’ll need to run the wiring, which is pretty minimal, and try to get on the schedule of the spray foam installers. The addition is 8 by 12 feet and will be a bedroom for my sister or other visitors on the ground floor and half an attic above. Now that it’s basically up I don’t have any more big pushes of house work planned for this fall and winter, but I’ve got a lot of trim, cabinets, built in shelves, and so on to build for the house in between working on instruments.

I’ll hope to have some instrument related news to post by the end of September.

July saw the completion (or to be exact it was August 6 by the time it got done) of my final stock banjo made in Orwell at St. Francis Farm. #260 is a cherry C scale that I got about half built sometime in the latter half of 2021, as far as I can recall. The parts were sitting on the bottom shelf of my work cart and I thought that rather than move it half built I should get it completed. A customer in Europe was looking for a C scale banjo this summer and was willing to wait a couple of months for this one to be ready.

On the 15th of August I moved the contents of the workshop up to the new (but not yet fully completed) building in Piercefield. It was a full busload and I had to open the vent hatch/emergency exit in the roof to allow the bigger bandsaw to ride standing up. Luckily there was no rain in the forecast that day.

After we move I need to put down foam panels and a second subfloor in the shop, insulate the walls and roof with mineral wool and install the lights and outlets, and then I’ll be able to organize the shop and start working again. In the meantime I’m working on the house so that we can formally move in in about another week. This week I was sanding and painting the walls and putting down the flooring, and early next week I’ll be hanging the doors, putting in a temporary banister and hooking up the wiring. The woodwork and cabinets will be done over the course of the fall as time permits. During July the spray foam insulation and septic system were installed by other folks. It’s nice to have someone else do some of the work, but on the other hand it means waiting for their schedules to clear, and things sometimes happen that set the timeline back.

I’m hoping to get back to building banjos sometime in the first week or so of September. There is a backlog of custom jobs on the waiting list, but nobody knows how many of those people may have lost interest by the time I get to their builds. I’m hoping later this fall to get back to scheduling builds on a monthly basis in the old way, once I get back to work and have some idea how far behind I am. I’ll also be making some stock instruments this fall, mainly banjos but also some fiddles and maybe guitars if time permits.