The Guts of the CT Banjo

Due to the overwhelming response by my sister and Chad.... here are a few pics of how the banjo came together... it needs some improvements but doesn't sound too dang bad for the Swiss Family Cookie Tin Dingwop Prototype....

Here is the bridge... a bolt that I ground off the bottom end of the head so it would lay flush on the tin....


The inside of the banjo.... nice place to store your goodies/contraband/dingwop/etc. etc. You see the neck goes through the tin, all the way to the back of the tin where it is held by screws, which, in turn, hold the neck to the body and provides a way to hitch up the strings....

Another picture of the neck and the cut out of the tin, where the neck enters the tin....

You can see the 4 wood screws.... could use just about any screws I would suppose... just the ones I had handy... And the "headstock" if you can call it that.... I used tuning pegs I had from an old guitar... a bolt for the nut. The neck is a chunk of maple I scored from the woodshop at work - fretless of course... which is cool because you can get that nice slide into and out of notes... so this dingwop cost me zero dollars to construct.... ooops, I take that back, I bought the tin from Goodwill for 49 cents!the things I need to improve upon.... pay a bit more attention to the headstock portion... I just hacked it out with a handsaw... could have made it much nicer than it is....
The neck portion INSIDE the tin needs to be cut out like ------i_________i---
if that makes sense.... basically the neck can't be sitting against the top of the tin - because the tin needs to resonate... with the neck body against it, it doesn't work so much.... I did hack it out but not as well as I should have....
Buy some freakin' strings.... I had some old used up acoustic guitar strings laying around - if I had a set I could have strung it up proper.... anyway...
The cut out in the tin body could have been a bit more percise and attached to the neck itself...which it isn't....
I'll post another vid of my ramblings on this thing... I can't put it down! My stoopid camera is dead on the batteries and I don't have any handy right now... so you'll all have to wait in hushed anticipation........ until then......