Buzzard Mountain Blog

Things have been crazy busy around Buzzard Mountain HQ these last couple of weeks, so I thought it was time to post an update on a few of the projects I am currently working through.

First up is a sneak peek at the Somerset S7 Ukulele Prototype.

This is a shot of my Lathe set-up I use for turning the rims, in this case it's the rim for the S7. My set up is based in part on the lathes shown at Hickler Banjo.







Here is the nearly finished S7 neck blank.





I have also been working on a Somerset S3 Banjo as well. Here is the nearly finished neck.



In addition to all of that, I've been working on the BM09002 custom banjo. Here is the curly maple neck with Cocobolo stripe and custom headstock design.







And lastly I've finally have the fretboard and flush frets installed on "The Snooks" gourd banjo. The flush frets are inlaid Mahogany to match the neck wood.





Thats it for now folks, look for more info on all of these projects in the days and weeks to come.

I've gotten quite a bit of interest in my gourd banjo project so I thought I would update everyone on my progress. Since my last post I have shaped the heel of the neck and added the dowel stick. With the dowel in place I was able to attach the neck to the gourd. This step is really a difficult one, more so then it probably appears. The difficulty lies in getting the angle of neck to the head at the proper angle so the action will be good. After trying several methods to line in up right, I finally decided that I would just have to make an educated guess and hope it works! I believe what I have now will work, but I won't know for sure until the head, fretboard and strings are installed.




There is still quite a bit of work to go on this but I will try to keep up with the pictures and progress reports as I go along.

I got into a conversation with a fella that attends the same jam session as I do about gourd banjos this last week. He wants to build one himself because he can't see paying $600+ for a pre-made one, the more I work on this thing, the more I realize why builders charge that much for one! I predict that he will think the same thing once he gets into his project as well!

I commend anyone who undertakes the task of building a musical instrument as it isn't as easy as it can seem from posts like this. My hope is that these post will help him and others who are interested in building such an animal.

I thought I'd post a few pics of another project I am currently working on. This one is going to be a fret-less gourd banjo and I have just about finished up carving the neck. The neck is out of Brazilian Mahogany with Cocobolo Rosewood overlays on both the front and back of the headstock.

The gourd came from a neighbor of my brothers, he was a 98 year old man who enjoyed woodworking for many many years. I'm not 100% sure what his real name was but everyone called him "Snooks" including his daughter who lives next door. While at his shop one day chatting about a chair he was building I noticed all these gourds up in the rafters. I asked him about them and he said that they had been up there for at least 30 years, I ask if I could have one to make a banjo out of and he said take as many as you want. So I now have a small supply for projects like this.

Unfortunately, Snooks passed away a few weeks ago, before I could finish the banjo to show him. So I take on this project in his memory and hope that he would have been happy with the outcome.

Pics: "Psst, you can click on the thumbs for a larger view"
Gourd with rough neck blank:


Gourd with nearly finished neck:


My brother runs a small greenhouse operation and has quite the green thumb, so this next year we are saving seeds from these heirloom gourds and are going to grow some more. Hopefully after 30 years or so the seeds are still viable, my brother seems to think they will be as he mutters something about archeology and finding gourd seeds in Egyptian tombs that sprouted after thousands of years. I have my fingers crossed!