February 11, 2013
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Suggestions?

I’m looking for a quick and easy way to break old crockery and tiles into tesserae for mosaics. We bash items with a hammer and we use nippers to do more controlled work, but when you’re doing a large mosaic, creating the little bits is the most time-consuming and tedious job. There is also the safety factor to consider. When you bash ceramics with a hammer, safety glasses are important.

What we really need is some kind of device that breaks tiles and crockery of any shape into bite-sized chunks without crushing it into useless little bits. It has to be safe and cheap and quick and easy.

I know my readers know just everything between you. Any ideas?

February 7, 2013
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Sugar in the Gourd

Tonight’s Daily Dose is all about Sugar in the Gourd.

I believe this is Dean Barber on banjo and Travis Brink on guitar. I more or less stumbled upon this on the YouTube Machine. They have a number of really good videos on Mr. Barber’s channel.

February 7, 2013
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Woodshop

The other day I posted photos of two oil cans that are on their way through the post from eBay-land to 27th Street. My plan, as I mentioned, is to stretch my modest abilities a little by making my own fretless neck for two new oil can banjos. I’ve spent some time the past few evenings thinking about my approach, including how I need to set up to do this work.

I made the first oil can banjo in the chaos that is my painting studio and I managed because there wasn’t any woodworking involved. If I’m to shape a neck and make my own bridges, though, I need to set up a little shop and I need to do it on a budget. Last weekend I bought some wood for a workbench but never found the time to build it. That has to be done this weekend for sure. Meanwhile, I’ve been looking around at used band-saws. I think I’ve I’m going to mess with this work I’m going to need a band-saw capable of cutting the basic shape of the head-neck-dowel stick unit as the price of admission.

I want to try to do the work using as few tools as I can reasonably use to get the job done well. I don’t have a lot of room and I don’t want to spend very much money. And so, over the next week or so I’m going to be setting up a small specialty shop.

Then there is the matter of materials – wood for a neck (could be one piece or I could laminate up wood for it) obviously, but also wood for bridges plus I want to add on a fretboard (do you call it a fretboard if you don’t use frets?…maybe it’s a fingerboard) as a separate piece. For the nut I may use a piece of ebony or perhaps make the nut out of a piece of bone. I haven’t decided on that yet. I’m also considering whether to use similar construction at the back of the banjos as I used on the first oil can, with a kitchen fork tailpiece, or perhaps instead have a protruding tail more like most gourd banjos.

I don’t have any extensive history of woodworking although I do know how to use the basic tools. This is going to be quite a learning experience for me, but I don’t think any one of the tasks I have to achieve to make an oil can banjo with a hand-built neck are beyond my capabilities. This is going to be fun.

February 5, 2013
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Julie Anne Johnson

I’m learning to play a tune on the oil can banjo called Julie Anne Johnson (various spellings for this one). One day I’ll put up an oil can version, but for now let’s enjoy some performances by far better players.

Here’s Tony Spadaro AKA Old Woodchuck…

Here’s an overcast and chilly fiddle version. Oh I like this one a lot!

Back to banjo, here’s Mr. Zepp. Wow, that’s just so fantastic.