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All kits have been shipped. All tracking numbers have been emailed to the email address you entered when purchasing, please check that email!
Thank you everyone for your support and patience. This was a fun experiment and fun way to celebrate. I will probably never offer these kits again at this price but I am considering selling another run of them closer to Christmas this year.
I will post some videos and assembly tips here tomorrow, so check back.16 of 20 orders have now shipped. The first batch should be arriving today. I will ship the remaining 4 orders tomorrow. I am going to work through the emails this afternoon to get tracking to everyone.
Thank you for your patience with this special kit. I underestimated the time it would take to get all of these out and I realize we are approaching one month since they went up for sale.
I will continue to update this thread with some assembly videos over this weekend.Glad you like the kit! No need for glue, but if you want to glue you can go for it, just make sure everything is lined up and straight
Update: these kits will begin shipping out on Monday the 8th. I hope to have every order shipped by the following Friday.
Will be posting videos and assembly tips here throughout next week.
Thank you everyoneThese rims are handmade and vary in size +/-1/4”
Average dimensions are 12” diameter, 2 1/4” tall, 7/16” thick.
I do not recommend this kit with intent of using a tone ring or a standard size drum head/hoop. Besides the dimension tolerances, there is also the non-standard neck to rim joint which may prevent the function of hoops and tension rings etc.9 MB seems to be as large as I can go for file size on the forums. Hoping it’s large enough for pictures and sound clips if not videos. Thank you
I’d do an oil based because the skin will be wet when you tack it to the rim and it could put runs or marks on the water based stain.
Looks great Ian, thanks for sharing!
I’m going to try to raise the size limit on attachments, so maybe you can try to repost that video and it might work.
I’m going to move this post over to the “completed kit builds” thread pinned to the top of this board. Trying to keep all the builds in one thread since it’s a pretty slow forum here.Hey Richard, welcome to the forum!
I don’t recommend steel strings on any of my kits and I’ll explain why. Each part of the kit is selected to work together. Nylon strings are easy to tie to the leather tailpiece and easy to keep in tune with the friction pegs. If you use steel strings you’ll almost definitely need to find a tailpiece that will work since the strings won’t have a good way to attach and can stretch the leather.
Then you may need to upgrade to machine tuners which I didn’t really design these kits for. You’ll see that on the friction pegs you wind the string downward and close to the peghead, you can’t do this with most machine tuners and the string will sit higher on the post, causing less downward tension at the nut and possible string buzzing issues.
Another point to note is that these necks do not have truss rods so they could become distorted or twist with higher tension strings, though I wouldn’t really be too concerned with this as they are pretty sturdy necks regardless. The last point: the drum is a tackhead which means it’s only as tight as you make it the first go, and can’t be adjusted to compensate for higher string tensions at the bridge- in short the skin could start to sag from extra tension.
I chose all the parts to work together in harmony, so changing one small thing could mean you must change several other things to stay in balance.
These are my recommendations and reasonings, but you are free to experiment and try out anything you want because it is your banjo and the main point of these kits is to have a fun hands-on project.Thank you for your order! I don’t have the dimensions off hand but the nut is non standard in every aspect so you’ll have to make one from scratch if you go that route, use the 3d printed nut for reference.
Screenshots of the original listing attached.
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The kits have sold out in under 24 hours! Thank you everyone. I will be processing those orders over the next couple weeks, thank you for your patience.
I will be moving information from the sales page to this thread: assembly instructions and videos etc.
Someone commented on the YouTube video that they feel like they got the golden ticket in Willy Wonka and I thought that was pretty funny. I’d love to be thought of as the Willy wonka of the banjo world haha. Alright, check back here, I’ll have all the info up by the time these kits are shipping out.
-BrianAttachments:
Hi Bill, thanks for joining the forum!
The strings will go over the zero fret and through the small hole, come out the back side and then wrap around the peg on the back of the peghead.
No need for notches in the nut because the small holes are spaced to place each string where it needs to be- therefore we use a simple fret here.
I used to route the strings like this to get a good downward tension on the string at the fret zero nut, and then there was no need to make an angled or scooped peghead. It was all to make things as simple as possible. I’ll look for a time stamp in a video where I show this.
Hope that helps!Hi GF, welcome to the forum.
The minstrel neck has shapes called “double ogees”
The swoops and points correspond to the 5th, 7th, 10th and 12th fret positionsGlad to hear David! Looking forward to seeing it!
If the pegs are holding tuning, I wouldn’t even worry about the shellac being a factor. If you need to clean the shellac out, roll up a piece of 320 grit sandpaper and turn it around in the hole a few times.
The pegs should sit wherever they need to to hold the strings in tune. You’ll want to guide the strings downward on the peg as you turn to keep a good downward tension of the strings at the nut. This will prevent nut buzz.
The exception is the fifth (thumb)string peg. You’ll want to guide that string to whichever height you prefer- usually to the same height that the other strings are floating above the fingerboard at the fifth fret position if this makes sense- it’s uniform string height.
I never used a 5th string small screw (pip) on this type of neck. Because the peg passes through the fingerboard I have always used the peg itself as the pip. It’s a simplified way of terminating the fifth string and it in my opinion is better than a pip because it allows you to adjust the fifth string height (action) to suit your needs. I do use a small screw in necks that have the peg going into the side of the neck as you can see on other models on the site.The thumb (short) string is number 5
Please watch the assembly video here at the 5:49 minute mark https://youtu.be/lVs0yYWGEt0?si=nq8sbvPtkNN8NIu6Strap and hardware used to be an option I sold but I no longer have a source on those materials to be able to sell at a reasonable price. Sorry for any confusion. My videos are a bit outdated but you will receive everything shown in the pictures on the kit page.
Thanks for your order!
You can do that if you want, but you’ll still have to handle the skin and pull it with each tack and push/hammer the tacks into place. I focus on getting the skin tacked to the rim, it’s a pretty physical process, then I wipe the extra glue off of the skin and rim with a damp rag. You’re doing all of this while the skin and glue is damp, so it’s not really possible to set the skin on and not slide it around while you are tacking it.
Hope that helps
