My first project in February was a banjo #371, 12″ curly maple with a wood tubaphone tone ring. Banjo Hangout member dpgetman posted a tutorial on how he built one about 10 years ago, and I used some of his methods, though he was working primarily or a router table and I on a lathe. Also his used a spun sleeve and brass hoop on top, like a Little Wonder tone ring, while the customer preferred an all-wood version on this one. It was a bit of a process to make the tone ring, but it did work in the end.
Then came banjo #372 and mandolin #8, both stock instruments. Banjo #373 was a custom 12″ walnut slot head guitar-banjo with a wider neck than any I have made before.
Along with this banjo I made a custom neck for someone who wanted it optimized for classic playing, like the banjo I made in January. He sent a Vega pot and the tuners, strings and bridge, and I made the neck and set up the banjo.
The rest of the month was spent on stock mandolin-family instruments. I made a walnut flat-top guitar-bodied octave mandolin (#14) in the same batch with the banjos above, and then made a curly maple archtop guitar-bodied octave mandolin and a cherry A style archtop octave mandolin (#15 and #16 respectively) in a batch with a walnut mandocello which will be #2. The mandocello is awaiting the delivery of strings and a tailpiece which I failed to order in a timely way, but the octave mandolins are shown on the Mandolins page. These instruments didn’t get completed till early March.
Now that they are done, and pending the delivery of parts for the mandocello (once they come it will go up on the Mandolins page too) I have begun working on a pair of walnut dreadnought guitars, a 6 string and a 12 string. I made a 6 string as a custom build a couple of years ago and have been wanting to make another since then, and a 12 string since I bought some tuners for one on on closeout from Stew-Mac nearly 10 years ago. I’ve also got a couple of custom neck projects and a banjo project that are waiting for parts to come, but I hope they will be able to be done in March. I’m also thinking about making a viola one of these days, and maybe a flat top mandolin and a 5 string fiddle. I built lots of shelves up near the ceiling in the house where I can store instruments and have them be fairly out of the way, so I feel more free to mess around with new possibilities.