One of my saxophone customers recently picked up this old banjo. I don’t know anything about this model at all except that it’s a four string open back banjo. It was missing the nut, bridge, and strings, so I offered to take it on assuming I could find all of these components and have a fair bit of experience with plucked-string instruments.
I found all but a bridge, which I could have ordered from the U.S., but I offered instead to build a banjo bridge to save on time and costs. I modelled the bridge off of the one on my personal banjo and made it first out of maple. I had to remake this after trying to install it on my own banjo, the strength was seriously compromised because I ignored the direction of the grain on this piece of wood. I remade the bridge out of some Wenge wood I had in the garage and remade it with the grain direction in mind this time. This ended up being a solid piece that was very effective as a bridge.
I cut down and shaped some raw bone stock for the nut and lightly glued it in place. Strings were strung and the bridge was adjusted for good intonation and it plays just fine. Happy that it turned out so well for what I am sure is work that takes more knowledge than was actually demonstrated/considered in my building of a bridge.
