For me, the first step was to figure out how to make a pot, or the body of the banjo. There are a few ways to make one, one is to bend long strips of wood into a hoop, and laminate them together. Another is to make a segmented ring with wedge shaped pieces, then stacked in a brick laid fashion and then turned to dimension. A different method uses staves notched together and formed into a cylinder, turned round and smooth and then veneered (or not) on the inside & out.
I’ve made three banjos using the long strips, for the first one I cooked the wood in a length of galvanized rain gutter for hours, then bent the pieces on a inside form as quickly as possible, they lose their elasticity pretty fast. Then moved to and clamped in an outside form to completely cool. I’ve had decent luck with this, as the banjos play and sound good, to my ears anyway. Not an easy method, I’m still working to get it just right. I started with 1/4″ thick boards, which need to be straight and defect free, and cut to exact lengths so the ends butt up to each other cleanly with no gaps.
I’ve decided that the 1/4″ is too thick, the wood cools too fast and it’s a workout to get all clamped before it stiffens up. I want to try using thinner boards and different method of joining the ends and hope to get to it later in the Winter, but for now I’ve been working to dial in the stave method, which I’ll go through in the next post.
Hampel Guitars 