I Won't Be Canoeing Around These Parts!

First thing Saturday at the shop was to draw up the Aspire 4 file for the banjo neck. No Fancy 3d modeling on this job! 2-2 rail sweeps, and a rectangular "create shape" were all it needed. I made sure to center in the material, so I could flip the part and machine the dropped portion of the headstock where the tuning pegs go. It took quite a bit of googling to find enough data on the size of a banjo neck, but I was able to piece enough info together to get something real. I didn't need to make the fingerboard curved, or have any fret markers, this needed to be very simple in design. I originally set up all the vectors for the creation of a 5 string banjo, with a tuning peg on the neck, but I started with the back of the neck, and forgot to mirror the vectors, so the tuning peg would have been on the wrong side of the neck :-O
As I had already machined the back of the neck, I had to come up with a solution. The solution was to mill off the bump-out for the 5th string, and make the neck without it. DOH! Jamie stoooopid!

The neck was 2 sided machined from a 40" piece of a fairly straight 2X4. A little dry, but did the trick.

Once the neck was cut, I traced it onto the top of our brand new-old rusty can, and cut the opening with a dremmel and a cut off wheel.

The neck slid through the body and got screwed to the can at the back. I drilled out the 4 holes for the now tarnished tuning pegs, and screwed them down.

I used a nail, bent accordingly, for the nut. I cut in 4 grooves so the strings would ride evenly on the way to the tuning pegs.

 In order to keep the strings seated in the nail, I drilled the headstock and hooked the strings with some rusty cotter pins, bent over on the back side.

We used a detail sander with a scratchy cloth to sand through the paint layers, down to the metal in spots. This got sprayed again with a rust accelerator, to age the now exposed metal.

 The final detail was a clothes pin for the bridge. No need to actually fasten it down, as the tension on the strings held it firmly in place!

I drilled the neck for the 5th string tuner, and used a bass tuning peg. Total red-neck!

The job delivered today at 2:30, and they loved it!
I've 2 small jobs to finish up tomorrow before we head down to Indiana, and I hope to blog about the sign camp while were there, but I think the internet is a bit slow, so it might be when we return before I post about it!
8)
JWO