None of these are kits or mostly shop bought parts. Looking at the different builders techniques will give you ideas on how to go about making or improving your own unique instrument.
I've done a pretty comprehensive sweep of the Web looking for homemade instruments but it isn't easy - mostly recipes for homemade jam and fishing reels. So if you have a homemade banjo or any other sort of instrument, let me know and I will post a link, or you can send me text and pictures, I will put up a page for you.
The homemade banjo listThis cookietin banjo has everything, steel truss rod, fine tuners, adjustable body-neck joint: -
Oh Wow! Word's just don't do justice to this site.
This one is a really ramshackle job. But despite being no sort of carpenter, the guy who made it must have been a fair musician. No build instructions but interesting nontheless.
This is a well packed site, dozens of banjos and other string instruments with photos and interesting constructional comments.
Just an ezine article - no indication of the Author's name or email. If this is yours, I would love to hear more about it - maybe a sound sample? Back to basics banjo This is a good one, a banjo made from a piano!. Here is a site about gourd banjo construction, lots of pictures and instructions for fitting a skin head. Includes a lot of information about other gourd banjo builders. David Hyatt This guy can actually play! Still at school when this was written but he put together a very respectable gourd banjo
It's pretty obvious that what John doesn't know about woodwork isn't worth knowing. More than one banjo here, and the standard is full-on professional.
But I have to say that (IMHO) checking the pot roundness to less than 20 'thou' with a dial guage is going a bit far!
A Classic cookie tin banjo. Slight problem with this site - the pictures don't show up but if you click on where they should be, you get a hi-res version. Cookie Tin Banjo Strictly speaking, I shouldn't include this one because it's mostly shop bought items. basically a kit build.
Hmmm...This is an ACSII site - no photos or sounds but the author offers to sell you a CD...!
The cookietin banjo archive page from Musical Instrument Makers Forum Not a banjo but a pennywhistle (flageolette, tin whistle - whatever).
I was going to put up my own page on making whistles until I saw this. It's
pretty well definitive on the subject. Even down to descriptions of how the various dimensional changes affect tone.
A Mountain dulcimer. That is, not the original, hammered type with lots of strings, but a plucked 4-string instrument.
This is from the originator of the banjomakers group on Yahoo. It's an account of building a gourd banjo, unfinished at the time of writing, but looking good. Rob Hutten John Peterson made a cross between an openback and a gourd banjo by tacking a skin onto a hoop. Good section on steam bending the hoop John Peterson A comprehensive photo-guide to building a traditional gourd banjo Curtis Harrell Here is a series of photos of a tensioned skin head openback, not much build information but the photographs are detailed enough to be useful to other builders Harrell "Autumn" Woody Other cool sitesThis site has a number of homemade instruments of all descriptions as well as a lot of other interesting construction projects
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