Shop News

  • April banjos and distractions

    April started off with Banjo #378, which was just the same as #375 except it had a slimmer neck from front to back to make it comfortable for the person who ordered it. Banjos 379 to 382 are all stock banjos and are shown on the Banjos page. Banjo #383 is made from spalted beech

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  • March guitars and banjos

    March started off with a walnut mandocello and walnut 6 and 12 string dreadnought guitars which wrapped around a bit from the end of February. I am pleased to have finally gotten the 12 string guitar done, and the others were fun too. They are shown on the mandolin and guitar pages respectively. I didn’t

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  • February banjos and mandolins

    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.

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  • January banjos and an A style octave mandolin

    January was a busy month in the shop this year. The first couple of custom projects were banjo necks. One was a fretless neck to fit banjo #352, which was a stock banjo. The customer wanted to have both fretted and fretless necks for the same pot, so I made a fretless neck and then

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  • December banjos and a mini archtop guitar

    December started off with a batch of 3 banjos. #361 was an 11″ cherry banjo with a Dobson tone ring and a slightly skinnier neck than I usually build. It was ordered with the measurements the customer thought would be most comfortable. Banjos 362 and 363 were stock walnut 12″ with different tone rings. They

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  • November guitars, an octave mandolin, and a mandocello

    November was a busy month, but mostly I was making stock instruments. At first I built an experimental 14″ archtop guitar, then a standard 17″ archtop guitar, and then a flat top octave mandolin. My only custom project for the month was the first mandocello I have ever built, or seen in person. The customer

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  • September and October banjos

    September was a quiet month in the shop, since I wasn’t there a lot of the time. About half of the month was taken up with visits from family members, which were nice. I did make a batch of stock banjos, including #352-#354 and wood topped banjo #5. They are all shown on the Banjos

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  • A temporary solution

    I’ve been able to add the instruments that are for sale currently to drop-down menus, so those pages are accessible again. This is not the best way to navigate the site, and as soon as I can get help or figure out myself how to restore the old layout I will do it. I apologize

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  • Website problems

    I have been using a WordPress theme called Sela for the last 8-1/2 years, but WordPress stopped supporting it and I wasn’t able to edit pages fully anymore. I was advised to change to a new theme, and that I wouldn’t lose any content, but that was not true, unsurprisingly. Also the subpages for individual

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  • August banjos and parts

    My first group of projects in August were oddly and coincidentally similar to one another. They were all unfinished parts of banjos being shipped to Commonwealth countries. First was an incomplete neck and rim assembly going to the UK. Next was a still incomplete but slightly more developed neck and rim assembly going to Australia.

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