Finished

Well, it has been a long time. And of course I finished the instrument almost a year ago, but haven't gotten around to posting anything about it here. I have to say I am super happy with the way it came out, especially given my inexperience with building instruments. My only real disappointments have to do with the fretboard - I failed to drill for the position markers accurately enough (they look ragged to me) and the fretting went well but not perfectly. Specifically I didn't dress the ends of the frets as well as I could have. Inexperience, I guess - fretting was the hardest part of the entire exercise for me. The rest was basically woodworking, and I have experience related to that. But fretting was a new animal. They are level and fully seated but the ends could have been dressed better. Nonetheless everyone who has seen it is impressed with the final product.

I'll post photos later.

Now, a good friend asked if I'd build him a banjo. So that's the next project. And, to take advantage of economies of scale (and the building of various jigs) I plan to build as many as five of them at one time. More information to come - I'm in the planning stage right now - but the first step will be to build a table for my existing lathe, with a purpose-built end lathe at the far end for turning the rims. My next post will be on that project, scheduled to commence on or around April 1st (since the shop reorganization - read cleanout - is underway).

For what it's worth, not counting the cost of the kit (which was a gift) I spent about $500 to build the instrument. However, almost all of this was for tools that I will use on projects for years to come. I figure about $60 in one time costs - glue, epoxy, etc. almost $20 for strings. If I'd have improvised rather than buying fancy tools for some tasks I could have kept the overall cost very low, though the nutmaking kit was well worth the cost, as were the fretting files.

And I got an instrument I'll play for the rest of my life for that trouble. And enjoyed every minute of the task.

Banjos, here we go! (I don't play the banjo, either!)