Gourd banjo, part 1

One of the projects I have going on now is the building of a gourd banjo -- or at least standing back and directing someone else who is actually doing the work! :-) A local high-school student, who is taking clawhammer banjo lessons from me, decided she'd like to build a gourd banjo as her class project. Here she is cutting a neck to length.



Learning how to use hand-tools takes lots of practice and time. Even learning where to stand takes some experimentation. We need to build a composite neck, and here she is using an old Stanley jack plane to smooth some stock.



Here's the neck blank, glued together.



We've trimmed the top of the gourd, one of many I grew in the garden a couple years ago, and one of the last steps is to scrape the inside clean.



Lumpy and papery, the inside is a chore to clean up.