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April banjos and an octave mandolin
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…
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March banjos
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,…
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February guitars, banjo necks and a fiddle
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…
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January banjos and some other beginnings
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…
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December banjos, a neck, and the other half of the November guitar
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…
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November banjo necks and half a guitar
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…
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Late October banjos and a neck
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…
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Late September-early October banjos and necks
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…
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Arrival at the new shop
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…
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A July banjo and (finally) an August departure
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.…