[Turner Rives]

Hey Brian,

I ended up reaching out to a friend of mine who works in instrument repair. She suggested that I hand-sand the pegs down to size using the 220 and 320 grit sandpaper, and she showed me a technique that I could use to maintain the taper while sanding.

I am happy with what I ended up with and have been playing already! So, no need to send another set of pegs or a refund.

For the sake of anyone who runs into the same problem in the future I will describe what I did.

When placing the pegs into the peg head, the tip of the pegs would only barley crown through the other side of the peg head. The string holes were not exposed. When I applied more force, more would come out, but the string hole was still not exposed. This was also true for the fifth string/thumb string.

This could have been caused by a mismatch in peg size and hole size, or varnish being in the holes. I had already varnished the neck, and though I did my best to keep varnish out of the peg holes, some got into the rim of the “entrance and exit” of the holes.

I took each peg and a long piece of 220 sandpaper about the width of the taper of the peg. I then wrapped the taper of the peg and turned the peg like you would turn a key. This ensures that the tapered sides of the pegs get sanded evenly. I did this until the peg protruded about as far as I wanted it to. Then I sanded again once with 320 grit using the same technique.

In my opinion, a peg should protrude with about a third of its length through the other side of the peg head, however, my instrument repair friend said to be conservative, because the forces of the strings will over time pull the pegs subtly father through the peg head, so be conservative when sanding.

I will be posting a video of me playing the banjo and a few observations about building online soon! I’m very happy with the sound of the instrument

[Author]

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