Banjo #18 Progress
Added 2019-02-26 17:55:57 +0000 UTCHowdy everyone. Just wanted to share a couple of quick shots of my latest build. I'm doing this for an 18th century historical interpreter who requested a "playable, five-string gourd banjo" that would fit the period as closely as possible.
Five-string banjos are really not solidly apparent in the historical record until the middle 1800s, however, a tuning peg and bridge (which may have been part of a five-string banjo) were discovered a few years ago by archaeologists in Maryland. These artifacts were relatively dated to the early 1700s.
Another anachronism are the cheap hardware store "cut" tacks I used to secure the hide to the gourd. While iron cut tacks were around in the 18th century, they would have been hand cut from sheets of iron and looked different from our modern day cut tacks. I've noticed that Pete Ross has recently started using wooden cobbler's pegs to secure the hides on his early gourd banjos and I agree that these are probably closer to what an enslaved banjo maker would've used.
Materials: homegrown hard shell gourd, red oak neck, whitetail deer hide, iron tacks, homemade black walnut stain.
