The new banjo rim

One of the new things on my "boy this will be fun to do" list is trying my hand at some instrument building ("lutherie"). Not that I am a woodworking genius, but I do love wood and music and instruments and I like trying to make things. A few years ago I "made a banjo" by basically assembling many pre-made parts. It was a great exercise – I learned how an open-back banjo is put together, and I got a lot of parts I could re-use if I decided to do some things from scratch in the future.

Well, I am looking at making a couple of banjo necks out of some lovely curly cherry I have. I need to laminate some pieces (I plan to use walnut and maple veneer strips), then cut them out with a bandsaw – which I do not have. I do not have much in the way of tools yet. I have no interest in making the pots. This is something even very good banjo makers usually purchase pre-made. I do have a neat 10 15/16" 1929 Bacon Peerless tenor that I can use for one pot. And I have the 12" banjo I assembled and I'll get the hardware from that. So, I need two necks and one 12" rim.

I stumbled across a really cool 12" rim on ebay a few weeks ago.

I knew about the builder since I had seen his site before. He does really lovely work. This rim is in walnut with a cocobolo end cap and pre-made/pre-attached wooden (cocobolo) tone ring. I won the auction and Mark, the builder, agreed to make a walnut dowel stick and do some other pre-drilling for me for an extra fee. The rim came last week and I think it is gorgeous. The cocobolo is a brown/yellow swirly color and even the maple has some figure. With the curly cherry neck and a finish of tru-oil, I think this will be really lovely when finished. As long as I do not mess it up too much! Mark has offered to help me via email when it comes time to fit the new neck to the pot. I hope to start in a week or two. It will take me a long time; I plan to go very slowly and be patient. Wish me luck!