June in the shop started with a bang and ended with a whimper. I began by building a curly maple parlor guitar. It is for sale at Tupper Arts in Tupper Lake through July 4th, and assuming it has not sold I will then bring it back here and it will be shown on the Guitars page. I thought I remembered to take pictures of it before taking it away, but I guess I must have forgotten.
The next project was a batch of 5 11″ banjos. #289-#292 are shown on the Banjos page, and #293 is also at Tupper Arts. It may come back and be listed here or it may stay there for a while. I need to follow up about that with the folks there.
Then I didn’t do much in the shop for a while, just some parts and assembly jobs. I took some time to finish up the trim around the new porches, and built a new stairs/ladder assembly for the house basement.
On the first day of summer I left by bicycle for three days at Low’s Lake, not too far from here. t was my first camping trip since 2019, and I had a very pleasant time. Pictures and a trip report are here in case anyone’s interested:
https://www.adkforum.com/forum/the-adirondack-forum/trip-reports/459171-low-s-lake-via-paddle-board-6-21-to-6-23#post459259
Once I got back I completed a hammered dulcimer which an old friend had asked me to make. It’s been a long time since I made one of these. It has maple plywood on top and bottom and the rest is curly maple.
The other thing I did that kept me out of the shop toward the end of the month was putting in a doorstep and four stepping stones from the house to the shop. I had two former doorsteps and two other random concrete slabs left over, and one large flat rock that my sister found in the garden. One of the concrete pieces is more than a foot thick so it was a job to bury by hand, but now I have cleaned up the yard a bit and should be able to track in less dirt when going back and forth.
In the past few days I’ve begun working on two cello banjos, one custom and one stock, a replacement neck for a Vega pot, and another slot head stock banjo. I hope to have them ready in another week or so, and after that I’d like to make another stock octave mandolin.