Skipper Custom Instruments

Custom Tenor Banjo Photos

(click on any of the thumbs for a higher-resolution view)

Here it is, finally, in all its gilded glory. The yellow/amber stain on the flamed maple is a perfect complement to the gold plating and black head. The maple is all from a

lot of local wood that I discovered a few years ago. The "dancing fools" inlay motif

is a "kinda" duplicate of a banjo I built for this same customer a few years ago, and one that he liked really well. The ebony insert on the back of the neck is also a

neat detail I've repeated for this customer. This is my first foray into heel carving on such figured wood, and I thought it turned out rather well.

Construction Photos

The rim is segmented, made from some rock-hard sugar maple with a tremendous tap tone; glued together with hot hide glue (that's what I use, always), it really rings. The turned resonator back matches perfectly the neck and resonator sides.

Are you wondering why the hardware here is nickel plated, while the finished product is all gold? After everything was fitted to the rim, I sent it all away to Steve Huber for engraving and plating (and he did a tremendous job).

The inlay was assembled piece-by-painstaking-piece, and sometimes seemed as though it would never be finished, but the effort was worth it.

The maple was gnarly for carving, but the application of sharp tools and more patience carried the day.

A new challenge arose when the purfling I'd ordered (and for which I'd turned grooves in the resonator's back) were backordered, with no definite date for delivery. A substitution of a wider purfling left me with undersized grooves, and no way of remounting the resonator in the lathe. I glued a center onto the back with hot glue, recut the grooves, and popped the center away with a hot, flexible knife. The repeating pattern also required subtracting just a bit from each outer segment and adding just a smidgeon to the inner segments.