Any Luthiers in the forum?

[Jim Fancher]

I haven't tried my hand at it yet. I've ordered a couple of catalogs and have been doing a good bit of daydreaming on the subject.

[Jamey Amrine]

I have built two banjos, and have an electric guitar started, but not by much. In the future I am planning a couple of more banjos, two flattop acoustic guitars, an archtop acoustic guitar, and maybe a fiddle. Lately, that all has taken a back seat to getting the shop done for winter. Here is the latest banjo (a fretless):

[Hank Walczak]

Jamie - Nice work. Did you do your own bending or was the body a factory item? Had some thoughts about trying an acoustic guitar but thought it would be too difficult to assemble all the equipment to accomplish the bending/forming and assembly. Am I wrong? I'll be trying to build a neck from scratch instead of using a "store bought" one for the next one I do. It may be more difficult than I think but the cost savings would be pretty large.

[Jamey Amrine]

Hank, the rim is actually a comercial rim made for snare drums. Most of the comercially available banjo rims are around 3/4" thick, but a thinner rim gives a deeper tone, which is what I was going for on this banjo, so I tracked down the drum rim on ebay. Steam bending for the rims is supposed to be easy, but it takes some time and setup and can lead to some failed attempts, so rather than throw away wood, I would rather purchase the rim.

I would go for it on the side bending. Bending around a hot pipe is supposed to be much easier than you would think, and actually one of the more pleasant parts of building, according to some luthiers I have talked to. You can also build a pretty simple bending machine. Check out www.mimf.com for some good info. Also, look up the guitarmaking book by Cumpiano. It is not exhaustive, but does have a lot of good info.

Oh, and making the neck was my favorite part from this banjo. It is so satisfying. Buy a two-handled microplane, and use that to shape the neck after you have the side profile cut out. A good reference for building necks for electric instruments is the electric guitar book by Melvin Hiscock.

-Jamey