Babbling Brooks

A varied batch

  Fall is in the air and Juneuary didn’t really burn off, this is the real Oregon weather that makes me shutter. Can we possibly be seeing 11 months of cloudy skies this year? I usually have pretty dark skin by September, but this year I’m as white as my Scotch/Irish wife Margaret. It seems a good year to re-read “Sometimes a Great Notion” by Ken Kesey, that book will expose your bones to the feeling of cold, gray and damp. I feel the only way to deal with perpetual gray is to celebrate the region in which I’ve been blessed to live in. I need to get out in the woods and let the rain drip down my back, or finally get a canoe and hit the river each morning before work. SUP? Kayak? Bike around town! One thing is for sure, if you try to sit around the house all fall, winter and spring waiting for sun to come around you’re bound to go batty.

  There you have it the Oregon update weather wise. No tomatoes or peppers this year, the pumpkins are even hurting. A slugs dream year.

  Luckily and strategically my bench is flooded with light. Currently it’s a varied batch; Two 20L five strings, one 10L five string, a 30L six string, a 20L guitjo and a 10L nylon strung guitjo. The two 10L banjos are the first 10L models to have frets and truss rods.

  Pictured is the batch of necks with one coat of sealer. I use a traditional method of finishing rifle stocks to finish my necks and the first coat is to oil sand the sealer into the wood to fill the pours. That is why the wood looks dull in the picture, the oil and wood are drying awaiting a dry sanding before finish coats. The necks get two finish coats of hard oil finish after the initial sealer oil sand, then one more sealer oil sand to fill the grain a bit more, then one more finish coat after that. When that coat dries I lightly sand the finish with 1000 grit and then buff it out by hand with a cotton cloth until it offers no resistance to your hand and it is finely polished. An “Old World” finish with “New World” finish products. I used to use straight Tung oil in New Mexico where the climate would dry it in a day, but that doesn’t work in Oregon. I need dryers in the oil now.

  Have I mentioned how fantastic all of the walnut I currently have is? I have a new source on top of my old source and he is the man! He is on the way to the woods!! I can get a great hike in and sort through hand picked walnut neck blanks on my way home. The wood is picked out by the lumber man with banjo necks in mind and then hidden in the “Brooks” corner of the building. Thank you Oregon…

Ryan Spearman plays Red Rocking Chair

Here is a link to the fine feller Ryan Spearman playing his 12” Spartan. Gotta love it!

http://brooksbanjos.com/index.php/sounds/sound/elzicks_farewell/

The verdict is still out

  Well we’ve had another week of visitors staying with us and these were the self sufficient type. They used public transit to get around Portland and pretty much saw everything, so I still got a lot of work done. But, and there always seems to be a but, I didn’t get time to record or really play the banjo I’ve been waiting to finish. I finished it, took pictures and it was quickly picked up and taken to it’s home in WA. The banjo was an 11” 3 3/8” deep silverspun with a Bacon tonering on a regular 2ply maple rim. After #170 blew my mind, the same banjo made with a thin rim, I really wanted to get a good comparison of the two. But, no I will have to wait until I finish another.
  My initial reaction when I strung this banjo up, was that I see why the folks that own these change them to nylon strings. It was tight and bright, feeling like the bass needed to open up a bit. Which isn’t surprising, Bacon rings need to break in a bit like Whyte Laydies do, so I see a quick fix by putting on nylon strings. The thin rim silverspun hit the gates running and the now owner of it agrees;

  “I am *really* loving #170.  It’s got great tone, and great depth of tone, as well as volume and presence—the best of both worlds with a “popping” attack and throaty bass.  I will definitely want to experiment a little with the 1/4” tone ring once it gets here, but I think the current configuration is unbeatable.  (#168 sounds great too, but in a different way, and is truly as beautiful as a banjo can be).”

  Yes, they can be convertible if I throw in an extra 1/4” tonering for you to tinker with.

  So, the verdict is still out, but I’m making myself the thin rim version asap. (no I don’t own one of my own banjos, I usually sell my personal banjos to shop visitors. It’s a bad habit that pays the bills) I also started the first 12” version which will come without the Bacon ring, since they only come in 11”. One other note is that once a banjo is broken in it just sounds better and better. Here is recording of the 2ply version with nylon strings;

http://brooksbanjos.com/index.php/sounds/sound/elzicks_farewell/

Enjoy

This little piggy stayed home

  I’ve always been leery about making one piece necks, especially on fretted banjos. I feel fine about making one piece fretless necks and love how lightweight they turn out. I like the thought of a banjo neck being made out of one piece of wood, but putting frets into that one piece of wood is another story. Without a truss rod, you get what you get and that has just been proven to me.
  I have had good success with the 10L fretless models, no problems and the people who own them love them. One fretless 10L owner asked me to make him a one piece fretted 10L, because he loved the lightness and the thump of nylon strings. Being that he is my best customer (owns 4 banjos with 6 more on order, all different kinds of banjos and stuff I haven’t made yet including a banjo cello!) I agreed…. No dice, I spent two weeks on and off tinkering with it to get rid of a 4th string buzz, to no avail. My plan now is to make fretted 10L banjos with a fretted maple fingerboard and my double action truss rod. They will look like a one piece still with the fingerboard and the neck dyed a unified color. They will let me sleep easy at night knowing that adjustments can be made, nothing is worse than a buzz that won’t go away.
  Here is a picture of the banjo that didn’t go to market, just before I pulled the frets out. This banjo will be a flush fret somewhere down the line.

Where the heck is Brooks?

  Here is where the 3-6 month wait period comes from. Did I know 2 weeks ago that I would spend two weeks out of the shop painting and sanding a house? Not exactly, but I did know that my band mates are sadly moving away and that painting their house was big on their list before they go. Well they have an old house covered in lead paint and three kids under the age of 5, not a good mix. I used to make a living painting houses and I have the tools to safely remove lead paint. That made me the candidate for being the lead remover and up on the ladder I went.
  Now that I’m off the ladder/roof and I have all the paint chips washed out of my eyes, getting back into the shop has me giddy.  This was a good exercise in job appreciation, I love being a banjo maker and I don’t miss painting one bit! It was good however to be working outside with good friends, I must say.
  Now I need to find another fiddler, good thing I’m in Portland.

machinist

Today I got back into the shop, but not until a drive through beautiful Oregon farm land to pay a visit to my machinist Craig. He lives in a town about an hour outside of Portland. I would probably complain that I have to drive out to his house every time I need hardware and pay him cash, if it weren’t for the fact that it is a lovely drive and it is a lot of fun hanging out for a bit shooting the sh t. It’s doing business the old fashioned way, by hanging out and BSing for a bit, then getting down to business. It usually takes us a few times to count everything up correctly and I always end up confusing him a few times, but I drive away with some fine handmade brass hardware.

Craig is retired and likes to bow hunt elk and fish, so I get loads of great hunting and fishing stories. I miss that living in the city, knowing people who really get out there and land their own food. Especially with a bow, I have huge respect for that. I also have to remember that he is gone out in the woods for a month each fall and to get my order in ahead of time.

In his garage Craig cuts, bends and threads my hooks. He makes the hook nuts, end bolts, turned ball end shoes and hex rim bolts. When my butterfly shoes and cast ball end shoes come in, I take them to Craig for taping and surfacing. Craig showed me how to do drawings to design hardware, even though I took a bit of drafting in my short stint of college. Looking at some of the drawings he has made for me in the past, refreshed my memory and I was able to do the drawings for my tailpieces on my own.

I met Mr. Craig through a machinist friend who plays Irish music and I’m forever thankful. I didn’t get a picture of the man himself or any of his taxidermy today, but I did take a picture of the funniest aspect to me in the whole deal. The fact that I walk into the machinist house with a pocket full of cash and I leave with lunch baggies full of brass hardware. I feel like a banjo gangster.

A clown, my son, stilts and a loft

  The last few weeks have been crazy busy around here. My son’s birthday is during the last week in June, then the Oregon Country Fair comes the next week. For my son’s birthday I made him a loft bed for his room. I have been wanting to do this for a while now and it was fun to put on a tool belt again and do a bit of construction. Today he filled the shelves with all of his books and comics. It’s pretty satisfying work making stuff for my son, he now has a loft and two banjos. He prefers drums however and that is just fine with me.

  I didn’t get to go to the Oregon Country Fair this year. But, through a friend of mine, I know folks who do stilt walking performance. I noticed that a bunch of those stilt walkers have some pretty bland looking stilts compared to the outrageous outfits they wear and the design of their stilts was a bit shabby. So, I came up with a design and I dyed them bright red. The first stilt walker I showed them to bought two pairs right off the bat. My friends are laughing at me saying that I’m the only one they know who can sell a clown some stilts. Well I did and he loves them. Jason Buffalo even went around without his costume a few times at fair he likes them so much!

More Old Time Music In Portland

Here are two stills from a cool video about old time music in Portland.

Click here to watch the video: Not Your Grandparents’ Square Dance

Portland, OR

Some folks have asked me to post stuff about Portland, OR. Here’s a little tidbit.

• Why Punk Rock Square Dancing Holds the Key to Our Rural Future  

New Model

Last fall/winter John Bowlin and I started trading knowledge with each other. My general way of making banjos was too slow and I was on the lookout for improvement. John was looking for ways to have other metal parts made than the parts he was making by hand. I think we both came out pleased with the result and we have become pretty good friends to boot.

Now as this blog may show, I’ve been achieving my goal of completing 3-4 banjos a month without being Johnny the dull boy when it is all said and done. I even get to hangout with my family on a Saturday without the guilt of an unfinished order in the back of my mind now and again. The other bonus is that I can allow myself time to experiment. The 10L is a result of that and hanging out with John. The 10L models are the one piece neck banjos I have been making lately with 1/4” x 3” deep 10ply hard maple drum shell, which I’ve noticed some folks calling “thin rim”.

Two weeks ago I finished a project that was a result of kicking ideas back and forth between a customer who wanted a somewhat more inexpensive way to get his hands on a silverspun banjo. My solution was to silverspin one of the 10L thin rims I have recently started using. The customer opted to go another route and get a different model I that have been making for awhile. I finished the silverspun thin rim anyway and took it to an outdoor jam for a friends birthday and I have to say I’m very pleased with the outcome. I played this banjo outside at night with two fiddles, two guitars and another banjo.

The first thing I noticed was that I wasn’t having to play super hard to hear myself in the big outdoor mix and that it sounded as good as my banjo I usually play (a 30L with a Bacon tone ring). I took it to a festival that weekend and the same result, I could hear it in a big jam without trying too hard and you can really feel it as you play it, the whole thing is sounding out the tune. So, the long and short of it is that I have a new favorite. I’ve always designed my banjos to be a banjo that is nicely in the mix of instruments and not out in front with the fiddles.

I’ve never set out to make loud banjos, but I think I have stumbled across one that sounds great at the same time. It can be in the mix, or you can please the dancers at the back of the room who are yelling for more banjo. If that ever happens. Pictured is John Bowlin playing the newbie, his quote is “It sounds real pretty Brooks and you don’t have to play it hard to get a lot of sound out of it, great for a band. But it still sounds like a Brooks banjo.” So in part yes, this blog entry echoes his sentiments too. John owns one of my Bacon tone ring banjos, so he would know. If anybody in the area wants to throw in a third opinion, please stop by.

If you are interested in this banjo I’m asking $1750, please see my add on the banjo hangout for more details. http://www.banjohangout.org/classified/16038  If it doesn’t sell in a month I can justly call it mine. The rim is 11"x1/4"x3 3/8”.

11 Strings Worth of Banjos Posted

I added two recent banjos to the gallery:

• Banjo 168 - An 11” 20L, with a brass tone ring. This one is for sale.
• Banjo 173 - A guitjo—a banjo configured like a 6-string guitar.

guitjo batch

One peculiar thing about banjo making is that I will get orders at the same times for the same models.  Currently I’m working on three banjos with bacon tone rings and three guitjos. Guitjo!? Yep, a banjo strung up like a guitar. I had to make myself put this one down, it is really fun to play. The guitjo is pretty loud and since the strings are new it sounds like a giant Irish tenor banjo. I should save all of my used guitar strings to string up new guitjos with. But I guess the beauty of getting the sound you want out of a new instrument, is that you have to sit down and play it until it becomes your own.
  For the tailpiece I modified a Bill Rickard six string no knot, by drilling string holes through the string shafts.

Banjo 150 Posted

Photos of Banjo 150 are in the gallery.

It’s a Spartan, with 18 shoes.

New arm rest available

I am now offering 1/4” brass round arm rests as an option on my banjos and boy are they nice!! $55

Some New Stuff

Today I posted a new Gallery entry:

• Banjo #158 - 11” Cherry Spartan

And five more videos:

• Banjo #157 - 11” Cherry Spartan with Whyte Laydie tone ring
• Banjo #157 - Another video of #157
• Banjo #162 - 11” Cherry Spartan with slothead, flush frets, and Bacon tone ring
• Banjo #162 - Another video of #162
• Banjo #164 - 12” Spartan, with a goat skin head