BREACH!

it's very windy here and we had two sections of fence break open. where's rick when we need him?!

liam and i were able to brace one section back into place with a steel rod and a 2x4, but the other blew out completely and we can't get it back in. so we made a makeshift fence with economy wire fencing, scrap wood, wire and twine. a few bags of sand and clamps to try and keep it in place. luckily the neighbors seem to be out of town, so we only have to watch out for bandit and hendrix for now.

Cibo Matto Knows Their Chicken

springy

when i stepped outside this morning the first word that came to mind was "glorious". super fresh and bright spring, birds singing and trees budding. these pictures don't really do it justice.

Doo, doo, doo, lookin' out my back door

(Bear River Mountains to the East and Forsythia in bloom)

The Wellsville Mountains across the valley (looking West)

f@%*ing fingerpicks

i've been intermittently playing around with the banjo. decided to try out the DGdg tuning as suggested by Mirek Patek (he's really good, and has some nice instruction at his website)

the fingerpicks are a challenge to get used to, awkward. here's a snippet of cripple creek, very slow...

little more banjo

getting it put together now.

the new tuners have a little metal stud where they seat into the wood on the headstock. i used the dremel to drill a hole for it to sit tight. excellent instructions on how to do this here (although these tuners look more like these "golden gate" brand)

drilled hole in lower right

i glued the bone nut in place and installed the two outer strings. this way the strings can act as a clamp to hold the nut in place until dry tomorrow. next i'll adjust the intonation with the bridge and then add the last two strings.

the bone nut. the string slots are a little big, oh well.

(another excellent instruction, "A New Nut", from frets.com)

here's the bridge set very close to where it needs to be (to get bridge placement, measure from nut to 12th-fret, then double that to get the scale length from nut to bridge)

i had to stop for the evening, my back is killing me. probably from going on a short but vigorous walk with B and the dogs after dinner!

some banjo progress

the heel cap (brown piece in this shot) had fallen off, so that got glued up and clamped overnight. then i put the neck and pot back together.

the head stock is cracked right through, down the middle, but nothing detached. i applied glue to the crack and clamped it. messy. guess i could have waited until someone else was home so there was another set of hands to hold this crazy clamp system in place.

the bone piece has been cleaned up and sanded down to fit, still needs some edges rounded up and then i'll put some string slots in it.

a real banjo

thanks to the generosity of friends i have a banjo! travis gave it to me (along with two other instruments). now that i have these parts all in one place i'm going to see if i can put it together.

here it is: banjo pot and neck, nice set of new tuners, bag of hardware and pieces of bone. i had dismantled it before i flew back from SF (many thanks to scrunch for shipping the neck and tuners, after they had a little side-trip to WA)

i've been trying to figure out the details of the instrument. 17-fret (short scale) tenor. the pot is 12" in diameter. if the neck and pot were originally together (and authentic) then it's an old Vega. From this website the serial number inside the pot dates to 1921.

here are some more shots, including two cryptic scrawlings on the neck/dowel, outer pot with a mix of old, replacement and missing J-hooks, and the battered but intact headstock.

so far i have only conservatively cleaned the pot (dry dusted with q-tips) and wiped the neck wood with orange oil. next i'm making a new nut from bone. the old nut consists of two broken pieces (shown below with the new pre-nut bone piece before cleaning/degreasing/shaping).

this is fun.