Acoustic Guitar Construction

Finally getting around to finishing up a banjo building project I started some years back. Thanks in no small part to the skills and confidence I've gained working on my KMG 00-12 kit - its coming together nicely.

This banjo started in a similar fashion with some of the key pieces pre machined. Although these pieces came with no instruction, or support.

One thing that has held me up for years is finding a very controlled way to thin the headstock - the fretboard surface always seemed a little long, likely because I was using a short scale fingerboard, and I wanted to bring the top face of the headstock down for the ideal intersection between the head plate and the nut.

I picked up an older EC Emmerich smooth plane last week, tuned it up, flattened the camber a little, and thinned the headstock.

Glued on the fingerboard, and head plate, and then using a coping saw cut the peghead profile.

Wanting this to be a traditional open back banjo, there was only one choice for installing the neck - a dowel stick.
Stew Mac has some great instructions and jig ideas for drilling the dowel stick holes, but lacking some of the key tools, I made do with a 3/16 bit, and a pair of 15/20mm forstner bits.

Just had time last night to install the neck and snap a quick photo.

In the coming days I'll try to post a few more photos of the dowel stick and neck details - peghead profile, and neck ogee.

Looks great, what a fun looking project.

Nice. One of my customers has been trying to get me to build him a banjo for a while now. Soon, soon.

A banjo is much less complicated than an acoustic, go for it.