bubby, I did finally find a reference to doing what you mentioned, sticking wedges against the dowel stick to tension the head. I may try that next time. I have to look up hubcap instruments that sounds too cool.
Mallorn, just get busy and do it! I'm surprised how little time it took, even with the fretting. It was no more time and less frustrating than building a bow out of a twisted sapling. With the price of failure set somewhere below making kindling while punching myself in the face.
I just ordered two of the foxfire books, can't wait till they show up. I know some cats that would be less annoying turned into bagpipes nevermind banjos
The fretting was fairly easy, I found an excel spreadsheet at bluestemstrings.com; all you have to do is input the nut-to-bridge measurement, and the fret locations are spit right out. I drew them up on Paint.net with the coordinates set to cm, printed them off and glued them to the fretboard. All I had to do was cut on the lines, which I did using a fine-tooth jigsaw blade mounted to the correct depth in a stick. The depth itself I figured using trial and error, flattening my wire until it fit in the slot and adjusting accordingly.
It probably took no more than about 3 or 4 hrs to flatten and file the frets themselves, but I wasn't keeping track. Just meditatively spending a slow morning with a fire and a pot of coffee.
The weight is ALL in the neck, so the balance is definitely weird. I'm not a musician so I couldn't intelligently discuss the playability on that measure. I made the neck fairly wide so I could pull down when bending strings, and because being no musician it's much easier for me to play cleanly with a wide string spacing. It coulda been lots narrower. That's also why I ultimately put on frets... My skills really don't allow for any additional levels of difficulty haha.
Thanks killir duck, Olanigw (Pekane), JW, paoliguy, Leroy, and lostarrow!
