Hi folks – here’s the last post while building banjo 200…. In this one we’ll show putting the rim together, the skin head on, and the final assembled banjo. Thank you so much to all of you who have been enjoying the posts. We’ll try to do more things like this in the future….

The new [...]

In this post the neck is stained and the neck and rim oiled….

Staining the neck, carefully applying it so as not to hit the purfling. I wanted to stain the neck to blend in well with the dark color of the chechen, and the stain does help bring out the figure and grain of the [...]

The peghead and upper fingerboard inlay, temporarily glued on and ready to be inlayed.

The photos above and below show the design inlayed and glued into place, but not filled or sanded yet.

Once the inlay is filled and sanded, frets are installed. We put the gold EVO frets on this banjo, they’re great quality and will [...]

Once the peghead has been rough-cut and spindle-sanded to shape, Jason’s using the file to get the sharp angles. This is a new peghead shape, a direct copy from an early Cole banjo.

Removing dust and glue away from the fret slots to get the neck ready for inlay and frets. (Jason’s middle finger on his [...]

Hi folks – here’s the third post while we construct our bicentennial banjo. Most of this post focuses on getting the rim turned and finished…

Turning the rim on the lathe.

Once the rim is turned, I glued the overlay on. In this photo the overlay is glued and the clamps removed, and it’s ready to be [...]

Rough-cutting out the profile of the banjo neck and peghead….

After rough-cutting out the profile, I use jigs on the router table to precisely profile the neck.

Gluing the back peghead overlay on, after steam-bending it.

Gluing the wood binding and purfling on. This section (where the 5th string is) requires steam bending the binding, and gluing it [...]

Banjo 200 is well on its way.

Figured one-piece birdseye maple neck (I’ve been saving this board for a while) with the Chechen rosewood rim.The neck blank has been cut out of the billet, squared up, and the truss rod slot has been cut.

We had Chris at Melrose Music make these Chechen rosewood rims up for [...]