A Photostory:

McKay Clydebilt Banjo

Where it all began...

Two summers ago I embarked on a project with my dad to build... a banjo. I'm not quite sure why I choose a banjo to make - I've been doing up electrics and acoustics for a wee while and had fancied buying a banjo, but money is short so make one we would!

After a few recce's to music shops, I had a set of rough dimensions for an open back plectrum banjo - 4 strings. Around 35 inches long I reckoned. I had already sourced my wood. The body would be made from a big old door from my house (which had been replaced, I wasn't just taking doors off) and the neck from some half-decent spare we had.

Hand-carved neck with tuners fitted

We started with the neck. Taking the block, we carved out a rough profile, leaving spare at the top and bottom for the body joint and headstock. Then came the elbow-grease, as the neck was smoothed, carved, smoothed again and so on until it was just right. There was to be no tension rod, so getting it right was pretty important! Remember this is all by hand;) The headstock was shaped to the right size and angled back for strength.

Reverse view of the body with bolts

Moving onto the body, the basic shape was cut from the door. Then, an inner circle was cut to remove the middle, thus making it an open back. A strengthening rod was placed in the same line as where the neck would be. Around the remaining body, 12 holes were drilled for the tension bolts. To make the tension bolts, we simply took some long bolts, chopped off the ends and bent them round to hook onto the tone ring. The tone ring was a tough one to figure out. How could I bend steel flatbar into a perfect circle and weld it?! To the rescue - my old Tech teacher (metal shop, for US readers). A quick visit to my old school and I had the metal jigs and welding machines at my disposal. Got the ring bent, welded and after a few goes got it the right size :p

Tension bolts and tone ring

Bought a Remo skin which fitted snugly onto the tone ring, and then fitted the two pieces to the body with the tension bolts for a mock-up. It was looking good. Shaped and drilled a steel plate to make the bearclaw at the base of the body which holds the strings.

A rather unfancy Bearclaw

Back to to the neck. The fingerboard, believe it or not, was made from a piece of 'click' flooring. It's tough and doesn't mark easy, plus is already quite thin. Plenty of glue got it stuck to the neck. Placing a bridge homemade, of course) onto the skin meant the string length could be calculated from bridge to nut, and from that the fret positions could be calculated. After cutting grooves in position, some fret wire has soft-hammered into place along with a little glue. The nut was made from part of an old signpost :p Drilling holes in the headstock made places for the tuners, recently removed from a very old Les Paul copy which had been done up. Finally, a wooden armrest was added to make playing it a bit more comfy...

Frets on, er, Click flooring.

Luxury!

Plenty of clean-up on all parts of the banjo and it was ready for a full mock-up. It actually looked like a banjo now! A heavy joint between the body and neck brought it all together. The tensioning of the skin was delicate, but done well and soon the strings were on it and the fine tuning of the bolts developed the sound into a banjo twang. All that was left to do was add the mark:- McKay Clydebilt.

Just finished

Tuned up and cleaned up, it made its way down to the local music shop to be tested by someone who could actually play banjo. "If it wasn't so obviously homemade, I'd be happy to sell this in the shop" was the result, and it sounded great - similar to a normal banjo but with a real bit of extra character, that magic spark. The banjo weighs a lot, hence the name Clydebilt, and it has a really great tone with that extra weight, especially for slide, with the (of course) homemade slide.

No expense spared!

A fantastic project and now I have a banjo which will always be more interesting than one I could have bought... not to mention a little cheaper. The final cost: £12.50 (~$23) due to having to buy some strings and thanks to my very friendly guitar shop owner who gave me the skin at a ridiculous price. I had pretty much everything else!

Finito!

The McKay Clydebilt!