The Rutherford Banjo

 ... with Uncle Harry.

Some of you might remember my aborted attempts at making a cigar box ukulele. Well despite proving that I'm no carpenter, I did get the feel that, although very subtle and complicated, this whole making an instrument thing was possible. All I needed to do was bring in the professionals. So I went to see my uncle Harry - he's the man when it comes to making things.

Harry happened to have a piece of seasoned beech which was left over from making a table and was keen to have a go. So I bought a copy of 'make your own banjo' from Amazon he started carving the neck to the plans provided. Harry has the right attitude, don't rush, take your time and do it properly, all the attitudes that I lacked in my previous effort.



We've been using my Windsor as a template and reference when were the instructions in the book weren't that clear. I bought the 11" pot from Stew Mac which came with a pre routed brass tone ring. They were a special offer and despite having to pay import duty into the UK it saved a lot of trouble as this and the neck are most tricky parts of the instrument to make.



I've been picking up the other parts steadily from Ebay and Eagle Music and Brown Dog Banjos have been a good source of UK based suppliers.

Here's where it started to get really exciting I got a pre-fretted finger board from Stew Mac, but managed to get hold of the head and tension hoop in the UK and once the elements went together for a test run it started to look like a tasty banjo.

I need to pick up the hardware for fixing the dowel stick/perch pole and a tail piece but once I've got those we are going to assemble the body so we can work out exactly where to place the neck.

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We've finally assembled all the parts for the new banjo. Uncle Harry has been hard at work carving the neck, and today was the chance to have a first fit of the banjo pot and head with the tension hoop and all the tensioning brackets - it fit like dream!



This is the my new beauty! The big decision today was where to cut the body of the pot for the dowel stick, but it was easier to determine once the tension hoop was fitted and the head had been tightened. The engraved tension hoop looks fantastic and the 24 tension brackets give it a real tight head.

A shot of the master at work! I've sourced the parts but its been Harry whose done all the skilled work.

The next step is for Harry to carve out the dowel stick and the hole in the pot for it to fit through, then we can have a first look at it assembled with the neck and body together!!!

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Cometh the banjo cometh the MAN! Uncle harry dropped over again today to update me and do some work on the new instrument, and boy its starting to feel mighty real. Today we fitted the neck and body together, fixed the tail piece screws and the neck brace. Harry completed the fretting last week, and now we need to drill and fit the tuners, fit the nut and bridge, string her up, and give it a go!

I cannot wait - but as the man (Uncle Harry) said 'if its worth doing, its worth doing slowly.' Amen.

 

Here's a couple of piccies as my videoing went a bit wonky.

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Harry dropped in the banjo the other day for a first set up. Its big, hefty and loud! It sounds a bit brash compared to the Windsor but with a bit of proper setting up its gonna be sweet. Uncle Harry's done a fantastic job and this thing is a real labor of love.

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Here's a first sample of the 'big dog' in action. I'm still suffering with a trapped nerve and can't play for more than a couple of minutes - this may also be due to the fact that big dog weighs a ton!

You can hear the buzzing on the first string and the actions a bit high, but these things can be sorted. The achievement is that it actually makes a sound!

Rumour has it that Harry wants to make another!

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or The Esoteric Secrets of the Luthier
I haven't done any updates on the Rutherford banjo for a while. That's because we've been having a bit of a rethink. The original set up was made with the neck parallel to the head and this produced a loud banjo with a very high action. It also produced a neck which became progressively sharper as you played up it. Although harry and I were pleased with the first set up it obviously wasn't right. The problem was how to fix it?

We used Roger Siminoff's Constructing a 5-String Banjo: A Complete Technical Guide which is good and has a full set of plans, but there always seems to be something on which he goes a bit quiet - the angle of the neck. In his plans the heel is shown with a very slight angle at the point at which it meets the pot. Originally we thought this might be a mistake in the printing as this isn't mentioned anywhere in the book, at least not explicitly.

Not to run Siminoff's book down its great for getting all the components in the right order for building, you also need so advice on setting up, so I also bought How to Set Up the Best Sounding Banjo by Roger too! This book gives you the other half of the story, getting all the bits you made to fit together and make the right sound, but the crucial detail of the vital neck angle only shown in the plans and never mentioned is only mentioned in one paragraph in this otherwise excellent book!!!!

I spoke to friend who made a living as a luthier and he said something very telling, 'If we told you all the secrets you'd make it for yourself and I'd be out of business'. But at least with this little hint we knew where we were going wrong. The tricky part has been putting it right. Over the last few weeks we have reset the neck twice the first time we over compensated and the strings touched the frets - action too low. harry has since reset the neck again and hopefully this time it'll be right.

At the moment she's sitting here waiting to be reassembled and restrung - fingers crossed.

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Finally, after months of trying I think I've got it right. I spent about six hours today fitting, stringing, unfitting, refitting, restringing, rejigging etc etc, but I think I finally got the neck right. I had to cut a slot in the pot where there perch pole fits to the body and loosen the bolt and slide it up and down until the action came right. I then cut a small shim which fits behind the neck heel and a plug to fix the perch pole bolt in the correct place and suddenly she sounded sweet... as a nut!

She needed a bit more tweeking to get the final sound right, as a couple of the strings buzzed, but I recut the slots on the nut and once they were slightly wider bingo - no buzz. It's some relief to get it right at long last, mainly for all the effort Harry has put in. Every time we it and it was wrong I was gutted for him. He's really found a creative outlet for his carpentry skills and he's dead keen to make a second instrument as proof that it wasn't a fluke, so I felt pressure to get a set up that worked so he can crack on with #2.

I've always held Harry in high esteem because he, and lots of my older relatives, are so practical and capable, and its been a rare opportunity to work on something together as equals. His skills with wood and my (meagre) knowledge of the instrument and I think we've both got something special out of it. As my mate Mark said 'That is a real legacy, something to keep and cherish for ever'.

all I can say is that I've learned a real lesson too.
2 degrees is a mighty small angle but without it you are stuffed!

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Uncle Harry sadly died earlier this year while 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 quiet 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