Buzzard Mountain Blog

It's been awhile since I have updated my blog, I've been real busy this summer building banjos and doing repairs. Earlier this spring I finished up a custom long neck banjo for my buddy Kelly in Chicago and I am just getting around to posting some pictures of it.

It's a long neck open back with a maple neck and rim that features an ebony rim cap and heel cap, ebony fingerboard and headstock overlay, Nickel Silver Inlay and a mastertone style tone ring. I hand delivered this to Kelly at the Henry Reed Fiddlers Convention and he was in love at first site.









Kelly's going to be posting some more videos at his site, so head over to BanjoMania to see and hear this beast in action.

Here is a recent build from my shop, it is a customized version of the "Road Kill" budget model. The owner of this one wanted a full length 5th string which required a custom Minstrel style headstock to accommodate the added tunning peg. It features the Bubinga wood tone ring and rim cap, Dobson style heel and rosewood fretboard and overlay.











I love it when a customer challenges me to build something new! Although the concept for a long 5th has been around for a very long time, it's certainly something you don't see often these days.

Here are some pictures of my latest custom banjo I am working on. It is a custom Road Kill model with a full length 5th string. The rim is 2 play Maple with Bubinga Wood Integral Tone Ring and cap. The rim is completed and the neck is roughed shaped at this point, I'll be wrapping this one up before the new year. The headstock features a minstrel style headstock thats enlarged to handle the extra tunning peg and wider nut for the full length 5th string.

I thought I would share one of my latest conversion projects. I received this old tenor banjo for a new neck, unfortunately there is not a lot of information online about the builder of it. It is labeled "Mc Cinnis Shaw Clef Club Brand" and she is a fine ol' beauty. Here are a few images of how it arrived at my shop:







It has a 12-1/6" Dia. rim with an interesting tone ring design that is similar to an archtop tone ring. Here is a picture of the rim and ring just before I replaced the head.


Here it is in its finished 5 string form. I completely made a new dowel stick for this as I believe it's best to leave the original neck intact vs. re-using the original dowel.




She plays great and should make a fine banjo for her new owner for years to come.

This is the next custom to come out of my shop, BM09005 is truly a unique and outstanding banjo. It has a lot of great features. This custom banjo has a block form, yellow birch rim, with a Tubaphone tone ring. The rim has a Bloodwood cap that matches the Bloodwood heel cap on the neck. The neck has a center strip of Bloodwood surrounded by some beautiful curly maple. The fingerboard is Bloodwood with an underlay of white/red striping. The head stock is Bloodwood with the same white/red underlay and an overlay of veneer marquetry depicting a night scene in the mountains. The headstock and fingerboard feature inlays of white & gold MOP stars and moon completing the night scape theme of this custom banjo.

Here are some pictures of the finished banjo:















This was a really challenging and fun build, the only thing negative about it is that I have to ship this beauty off to its new home! I'm sure it will be well taken care of.

This is the latest custom banjo to leave my shop, it is a 11" maple rim with Rosewood Tone ring and cap and it features a short 24" scale length. The headstock design is a custom one designed around the customers love of Kayaking, so it is shaped after his favorite paddle. The headstock inlay is a Chakana or Inca Cross done in Abalone shell and gold MOP. The Rosewood in the picture is still very orange in color, over time (the next few months) it will naturally darken to a rich tobacco brown.

Here are a few pictures:

I recently finished up another neck project for a customer who had an old spunover banjo that belonged to his grandfather. This was a fun project and the neck turned out great on this old banjo. The rim had been refinished by it's owner, but the old neck was in pretty bad shape. Amazingly it was an almost Identical neck to the one that was on the old Gibson pot. These two banjos came to me from two different parts of the country, I wish I knew who made these necks!

Here are a few images of the old necks on this one and the Gibson.




Here is the new neck on this wonderful old banjo

Awhile ago I did a post about an 83 year old Gibson Tenor banjo that was sent to me for a rework. You can see the original post here.

Here is how it arrived to me:


And here is the finished banjo:




This was a fun project and I'm glad I got the chance to restore this old rim to a playable condition, hopefully the owner will have many years of enjoyment out of this one!

There's been a lot going on around Buzzard HQ lately and today I started on a wonderful repair/restoration. I was sent this banjo and the owner really didn't know much about it, only that it has hung on his wall since the early 70's and had a Gibson tag on the inside. The banjo turns out to be an early 5 string conversion of a 1926 Gibson Tenor Banjo, this conversion was done sometime in the 60's I presume but may be earlier. The pot is stamped with a serial number 8257-30 and has a Tag that says "The Gibson, Gibson INC, Kalamazoo Mich.". A little research turned up that this pot was made in 1926 and was originally an open back tenor.

The current state of the banjo is pretty poor, the neck is bowed enough to make this banjo unplayable. So I am in the process of doing a restore on this thing, building a new neck, repairing the rim which was slightly mangled in the original conversion. The owner doesn't want a full reproduction of the original conversion or an original Gibson, he just wants a nice playable banjo. I'll post some more details and images as I progress, but for now here are some images of the banjo in the state it arrived in. The original banjo had coordinator rods if you look close you can see the holes for them.











This should be a very exciting build! I have some other repairs and new banjos going as well, and I will update the blog with other projects soon.

I have finished up another banjo project I would like to share, this one was dubbed "The Bluegrass Machine". This banjo features a Tony Pass Lost timber rim and Huber flat top tone ring. The neck and resonator are made from beautiful curly maple and stained with a vintage hand rubbed sunburst then finished with a Hard Oil. It has a custom pearl inlay design with a 5th fret star and a star and wings at the 12th fret. It's hard to tell from the pictures but the curly maple stained this way has a ton of depth to it and looks like it breaths as you move your eyes across it.







Here is quick sound sample, although I don't play 3 finger style I think it's a good representation of how this baby sounds.