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| S. Heslop:
Made the shoes. Burr in the router to shape them, using a handle screwed in. I thought it was neat the way the brass shavings moved to the nodes on the table surface, like that one plate experiment thing. Other shaping was done with a file. Here i'm putting a slight concavity into the side that sits against the banjo rim, just so they don't rock about. They're pretty mangled and all sorts of different dimensions. For the amount of work it took I feel I probably could've done better. But they'll still do. The shoes on two other old banjos I own are similarly misshapen, and I can only assume they were made in a similarly stupid way. If I had the time I would've tried lost was casting them Also fit the neck to the pot. Drilled some mounting holes. The idea is that i'll make a kind of nut that fits in the larger hole in the base, I think they call them barrel nuts. Perhaps could've done it in a more 'invisible' way but I just forgot to drill the hole before sticking the fingerboard on. Sanded the heel fit. Hopefully got it close enough but it shouldn't be too difficult to adjust it. You can see the oak 'clamp brackets' in this picture; the pine ones snapped almost immediately. For the tension band I tried ring rolling it. It's 5mm thick 304 stainless and this piddly ring roller wasn't at all fit for the task. Plan B is to bend it around a form, since I want the curve to be fairly even but don't want to go wild trying to make a stout ring roller. That's a project in itself. Anyways this 'form' was an offcut from making the heel sanding setup, it's 267mm and the steel after bending it to that sprung back to 365mm. I might be wrong, but i'd assume that if I worked out the percentage springback I could make another form the same percentage smaller than the final diameter and bend it to that. It's some simple damn maths but i'm not really in the mood to do any heavy thinking at the minute. Bit disappointed about the ring roller since I was hoping to get the holes stuck in around the rim, but I wanted to know how high I should make them to fit the hooks on right, which required the tension hoop to be made. No such thing as a quick job... Oh yeah, i'm also wondering if there's any sort of clever graphic to put on the peghead. It's not really necessary but I'd still like to stick something there. Can't think of anything that wouldn't either be boring (like my name) or get old fast. |
| vtsteam:
Those shoes look really nice! :beer: |
| S. Heslop:
Welded the ring closed. Using a regular rod on stainless, I did a test first and found that it did produce a surprisingly strong but extremely brittle weld. So I butt welded the ring. But it needed some adjustment to get it to properly fit around the rim, since bending it to the form wasn't perfect. Anyways I tried bend the weld even though I should've known better. I had a plan to drill holes and screw a joining piece of mild steel across, but I guess it's common knowledge that free-hand drilling 304 stainless isn't worth trying. I got one and a half holes in, the second hole drifted and got mangled. So I just welded the joining bit of steel on instead. It's perhaps a bit wider than it needs to be so i'm going to have to make an extra wide tailpiece to hide it. Anyways once I had the hoop on I could measure about where to put the shoes, so I drilled the holes in. The hoop needed notching. I think if I ever had to do this again i'd just buy a tension hoop. They sell for about £30-40 and considering the price of the metal itself, the silver solder you'd need to do a proper joint, and the files that'll be considerably less sharp by the end of it all... Or i'd at least buy a softer metal. Anyways after giving the hoop a brush with the wire wheel (that came on a bench grinder and I had every intention to get rid of it once i'd gotten around to buying a wheel to replace it, but i've since found it incredibly useful) I installed the rim hardware to make sure it fits. All seems good. I need to rout the base of the neck to give space for the rim, but i'm going to need to fuss with router bits again for that. I'm a little scared about routing endgrain, especially with the edge banding. After that there's the tailpiece to make, and then sticking the shellac on. And unless I forgot something, then everything after that will probably count as 'setting up'. So hopefully I should have it all done by the end of THIS weekend. |
| Chuck in E. TN:
Love banjo music, and have very much enjoyed watching this build. Can't wait for the first tune you play on it! You know you have to play a song and do a video of it, fight? Chuck |
| S. Heslop:
--- Quote from: Chuck in E. TN on July 31, 2015, 05:19:37 PM ---Love banjo music, and have very much enjoyed watching this build. Can't wait for the first tune you play on it! You know you have to play a song and do a video of it, fight? Chuck --- End quote --- The worst part is that i'm probably going to also have to sing. I think i've gotten fairly okay at singing but i'm terrified to record myself just in case it's all a delusion. Still thinking about what to play. I've got a default tune I play all the damn time and everyone is sick of hearing, so if all else fails i'll end up playing that. What i'm most excited to see though is the statistics for the video. I've heard a few people talk about how building an instrument holds people's interest, but the moment they start playing to demonstrate it the majority of people close the video. |
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