Babbling Brooks

Two More Banjos In The Gallery

The photo gallery has two more recent banjos:

• Banjo #169: A 20L Spartan
• Banjo #175: A 10L Spartan

New Videos Posted

New videos of Banjos 157 and 174 are posted at Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVPadDCTF0E

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_5oHjKxHY4

New banjo posted in gallery

  Banjo #174 posted in the gallery. A new favorite, I really like the looks and feel of this banjo. It is a 20L with classy star inlays and a Bacon tone ring. The rim has an ebony rim cap. The nickel finish on the tone ring and the tuners was removed professionally by a plating company and it really looks good to me. The customer had it done, so I’m not sure about price.

http://brooksbanjos.com/index.php/gallery/category/C29/

more interesting mail

About 3 hours after Yuki’s package arrived, a package came fed ex from VT. Um err uuh 1925 2.5 dollar Indian head Quarter Eagles and really old looking Brazilian rosewood. These rosewood pieces have been stickered since the early ‘60’s and were cut from an old log, so it’s legal… and it was sent to me, I didn’t purchase it. So, hopefully I’m off the hook for having the stuff in my shop. I’m guessing that the two coins and the pieces of rosewood are of equal value to the instrument I’m using these on. It is going to be an all cherry 20L with the rosewood on the headstock and as a rim cap. The peghead will be a slothead with the rosewood faceplate and the two gold coins inlayed front and back. Yep, those coins are pure gold, there’s gold in them there banjos!

tee shirt designs

To possibly keep a long story short, I grew up on land that was taken from the Japanese during World War II. My house was two blocks from Whites’ Point and Royal Palms state beach in San Pedro, CA. I spent a majority of my time growing up down at Royal Palms, more time probably than at home. I was out surfing as much as possible. Before World War II, Whites’ Point and Royal Palms was a Japanese resort with hot springs and an abalone harvesting operation. In 1933 an earthquake leveled all of the buildings and later that decade the only tropical storm to ever hit CA, washed the remains of the resort out to sea. Leaving me and my friends, decades later, all of the cement foundations and outdoor ballroom to grow up with and wonder about. Not to mention underwater hazards. The last remaining structure was the fountain from the middle of the resort, which a friend and I watched get swallowed by the sea in 1983 during a huge pacific storm. We also got to meet many Japanese tourist coming to visit the area.

Here is a slide show of the area from the 1920’s take a peek if I have your interest;

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/pvlocalhistory/with/3855599783/

Here is a little more history and a picture of the fountain;

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/5views/5views4h101.htm

  So, I have always had a connection with Japanese Culture in America, basically through the history of the land I grew up on. I have always had a fondness of Japanese art and especially Japanese art that depicts shall we say “Americana”. In 2005 I made a friend, through my website, in Japan who is an artist and his work is some of my favorite. His name is Yoshi Yuki, he lives in Tokyo and he has a great love of banjos and old time music. This is his blog…  http://blogs.dion.ne.jp/goodgoodsillustration/. Last year he agreed to do T shirt designs for me and today they arrived… I LOVE THEM!! I hope yall do to. It is very enjoyable that through making banjos, I have found friends abroad.

  Pictured are the watercolor and pen on thick paper originals. They will be scanned by those tee shirt making peoples, to make tee shirts. Brooks Banjos tee shirts!!

  The first is a T made with banjo and fiddle to spell out the music we all love so much.

  The second is a banjo on an old chair the lettering says “Katakan” which Yuki says means “Brooks Banjos”  How cool is that!!??

  The third is my BB tailpiece and the lettering says “Hirgana”  which means “tailpiece”

  The fourth picture are big waves at Royal Palms point and you can see on the shore the remnants of the outdoor ballroom floor from the 20’s that was built by the Japanese. There are tables and booths of stone built into the cliffs also…

  The fifth picture is of all the boys taking a licking at Royal Palms jetty.

  THANK YOU VERY VERY MUCH YUK!  You have made my day, my wife and I both weeped when we opened the box. MUCH RESPECT.

Banjo #29

  Banjo #29 has landed back in John Bernunzio’s lap and it brings New Mexico to mind, so I thought I would dig up some old photos to post.

  The story is that I moved from Eugene, OR to Questa, NM in 1999 to play music and live with a community of musicians. We were also raising our kids together. During my second week in town, 3 acres came falling out of the sky and I ended up living at 8,000 feet in a 300sq/ft A frame cabin 11 miles south of the Colorado boarder. I lived there for six years. I learned how to scrape a living together in the middle of nowhere and I became a banjo maker. It’s a huge long story. But here are pictures from my last weeks before I left and drove back to Oregon. My shop was split between my Chevy Spartan school bus and my cabin. I also had access to a metal shop and a cabinet shop in the neighborhood. I ran the tools with a decrepit old generator, which died the week before I left.

  Banjo #29 was the last banjo I completed before hitting the road and I was very excited about it. I owned it for almost a year before a friend gave me an offer for it I couldn’t refuse. He immediately sent it to Bernunzio to show folks I was out there. We are talking a friend who purchased five banjos from me while I was getting started making banjos in New Mexico to keep me eating and working. Much thanks JGM. Yes, I used to make Minstrels…the wet spot on the floor is from my sponge bath and how many banjos do you count along with the sleeping child?

  Another friend of mine has owned #29 for 4 years now, but fretless isn’t her thing. The solution was to make a fretted replica for her, which is completed, so hence John has #29 again.

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.