Antique banjo restoration.

I'll apologize up front for not documenting all the processes in this project to my normal level of detail but I think you'll get the idea of how I did things from what I did document.

A friend from work brought me a 140 year old George Dobson banjo that she inherited.  It was in rough shape, over the years the machine heads had been replaced with some odd ducks.  The fret inlays had been obscured and lost.  The head stock had seen some horrific attempts at restoration to say the least. Some one had thought it was a good idea to paint the fret board.  What I did see was enough good things to warrant a complete restoration.   

Thanks in advance for viewing and please consider this Instructable for the Shop Bot challenge, I could really use it to bring my inlay work up to the next level.

Step 1 Assessing what needs to be done.

Before any major restoration project you first need to determine if: 1) is it worth it?, 2) what is the scope of the job?, 3) do you have the skills to do it?, and 4) will the client be willing to pay?

For this job I answered these questions with yes, it is a quality instrument with lots of good years left in it.  The majority of the work will be on the neck. I was confident it my skill set to take on the task, and yes she was willing to pay the price. So lets look at what needs to happen.

Comments

[PerfectPantaloons]

LOL

i actually think the head looks kinda cool with the tuner knobs like that

[friger]

No, no it doesn't. hahahaha

[PerfectPantaloons]

Ha ha ha... i wish i could play banjo, but ima guitarist

[friger]

Same here, I do know this thing has an amazing amount of volume.

[PerfectPantaloons]

hmmm, all of the banjos that i have heard were really quiet... so quiet that i had to stop using a pick...