Rutherford Banjo No2

 When Harry sadly died earlier this year he was working on another banjo. He'd decided that making one instrument could be a fluke, and if you could really do it, you should be able to do it again. He asked me to order all the hardware and then everything went quite while he got on with it.

I think he was a bit put out that the first banjo wasn't perfect first time and that some of the secrets of the luthier's craft ie the set up of the instrument weren't covered that well in the plans and instructions that we'd used. In particular, the subtle two degree angle of the neck to the body, although in the plans wasn't mentioned. We thought this was a fault in the plans, cut the neck so that it was flush with the head and on first playing the banjo had a very high action and fretted increasingly sharp as you moved towards the twelfth fret. It took a couple more goes before we finally got it right and I think Harry decided that he was going to do it all again, but this time he was going to get it right first time.

This is a photo of the results the, Rutherford Banjo No2, and he did get it right first time. When we came to start clearing the house in the bedroom we found a finished instrument just waiting to be strung. I knew he'd got quite a long way as we'd talked about getting together to look at his progress. I'm just glad that he'd had time to finish the instrument before he died.

 Harry made a few improvements on No1. First of all he got the neck set up spot on first time, no fiddling about with the perch pole this time! He'd mastered the fretting and the finish on the fingerboard is very good and he'd always been a bit sniffy about the size of the peg head, so the new one is slightly larger.

In fact there were only two things to sort out before it could be played. We'd bought a nylon 5th string peg which proved to be rubbish and as soon as the string was tensioned it started to distort. I'd kept a bit of bone from the previous banjo so I carved a new one. It needed a replacement tuner as one had gotten damaged and wasn't working, and that was it. I strung it, tuned it, and it was sweet - first time...

I'm not sure what he was planning to do with this one. He'd joked about learning to play himself, but I have sneaking suspicion that he was going to give it to my brother, and that's what's going to happen to it.

Here's a comparison of the two.



No2 on the left and No1 on the right




and here's a sample of what it sounds like.

listen to ‘Dirty Old Town’ on Audioboo