Clawhammer banjo is played by striking the strings of the banjo on the downstroke with the fingernail of either your index or middle finger. If you play a lot, your nails take a lot of abuse, especially if you use steel strings on your instrument. You don’t have to keep your nails super-long. I find that as long as my the tip of my nail extends beyond the pad of my finger, it’s fine. If my nails are a bit longer, I get better volume. Occasionally I have a nail disaster, as happened today while I was out picking some tunes on the porch today.

As you can see in the photo, my nail cracked badly in about as bad a spot as possible. There was nothing to be done but cut the nail down to the crack, which I just did. It will be weeks before this finger is a useful clawhammer tool again.

Fortunately I have a back-up. The crack was on the nail of my index finger, but I also grow out my middle finger nail as an alternate. I can play about as well with my middle finger as my index finger. In fact, I’m not sure which finger I prefer to play with. I also grow out the nail of the ring finger on my picking hand. I do this for achieving percussive effects like clucking sounds.

Usually between my index and middle fingers, I have at least one useful clawhammer nail. Once in a while one or the other of them breaks. Some players are fortunate enough to have really tough nails that simply don’t break even with lots of playing. I paint hardener on my clawhammer nails (that’s what gives them the sheen you see in the picture. I don’t know if that stuff actually does any good or not, but it at least reminds me to be attentive to taking care of my nails.

Some players go down to their local nail salon and get an acrylic nail or two, and apparently this works very well for clawhammer. There are also all kinds of clawhammer picks available, but I haven’t found one I like. I want to feel the contact when I play, and the sound of a nail making contact with the strings seems just right. Quite a few players swear by picks they make themselves with ping pong balls and duct tape. I tried making one of these but it didn’t work out well at all. Maybe I had a poor quality ping pong ball.

For now, I’ll stick with using the hardener trying to keep my natural nails intact. If I break my middle finger nail in the next two or three weeks though, I’ll be in a pickle and I’ll have to resort to either a pick or else venture into one of local nail joints.