Making of a Banjolele – Part 1
by Josh on Jan.25, 2010, under Making Things
This was a project that I had started before Christmas with the intention of it being a Christmas present for a special someone, but alas I have yet to finish! Since I am back at school again I have some nice blocks of dead space between classes which I figure is a perfect time to make some posts about the process that I am going through to build this stringed instrument.
Note: Take everything I do while making this with a grain of salt, I have never done this before and am making up many things as I go along. This is definitely a learning process for me.
For the neck of the banjolele I went with a strip of red oak sandwiched between two pieces of maple. After these were glued together and allowed to dry I attached a template of the side profile of the neck.
A few cuts later…
To save on wood used I only made the neck block as thick as the bottom end of the neck, this meant that the pegboard would need to be widened using two small “ears.”
The next step was to cut out the rough profile of the neck using the bandsaw. Doing this first would save me hours of shaping with a file and rasp.
With that I had a rough neck ready to be shaped and sanded.
