Banjo Ukelele, "Sing a Song of Sixpence"

Our new (old) Banjo Ukelele

I've spent some time restoring a small, English made, banjo ukelele. It has no identifying manufacturers markings but I'm reassured that it is English by those who know. The instrument came into my possession when an elderly colleague of my father was moved into full time care by his family. Whilst clearing out his home they very kindly thought to gift me several items of musical and sailing interest.

The vellum had a small tear, the four pairs of strings were rusty and nasty and the neck was pulling away from the pan at an alarming angle under the tension of those wires. The instrument showed signs of having been played a good deal in it's early life as evidenced by the frets and ebony fingerboard which were well worn and the finish was abraded in many places down to the wood.  The banjo mandolin had also sustained some damage during its lifetime with some of the ebony on the head stock having come away and very poorly reattached. other damage included the tail piece which had been bent down, touching the vellum.

I stripped the instrument down to its last component parts and began assessing and cleaning the bits and pieces. I washed all the metal components and polished them before putting them all into a container saving all the original screws which were all re useable except the neck screws.

I unscrewed the neck from the pan and set them aside and prepared my workbench for the repair, re shaping and reattaching of the neck to the pan. I scraped the ebony finger board with a Stanley blade between the frets until all the recessed marks were gone. I then filed the frets.

Next I modified the machine heads by removing every second winder, reducing the number from 8 to 4. I refinished the ebony repair to the head stock. The ebony is very low grade and may even be faux. I begin to wonder if this company was scorching maple wood to near charcoal to create an ebony facsimile!

I refinished the distorted, mating wood surfaces and reattached the neck with suitable new fasteners.

I inspected the vellum and realised that it has sustained damage to the perimeter during manufacture due to a very poor casting finish on the cast iron tone ring and on the chromed brass  tension ring, each having very sharp edges. I removed the flesh hoop from the vellum by soaking it in water for a few minutes. The flesh hoop was a piece of galvanised wire, quite suitable to be reused.

I then set to with a fine file and emery paper to remove the sharp edges and the corners that bore down on the vellum. After achieving this I gave the raw cast iron tone ring a coat of iron oxide, red etch primer which was a suitable finish colour for the ring which can be seen through the pierced chrome tension hoop.

I had ordered a new vellum from a respected instrument maker in Auckland, Graham "Bones" Hurlock of Barebones folk instruments.

I needed a 14" vellum to cover the 8" hoop. I soaked the new vellum in cold water for 10 minutes then wrung it out before taking it over to the work bench. The process of mounting a new vellum can be found in several good instructional videos on You Tube.

Once the new vellum was mounted and dried I was able to reassemble the components.

The next step was to set up the instrument to take four new Aquila, tenor, Nylgut strings. The old nut had to come out and I needed to make a new saddle, I had a small piece of "tusk" resin nut stock left over from my bass guitar project which I shaped to fit.

I then selected a beautiful piece of kauri timber from which to form a saddle. The old saddle was genuine ebony but it was too low profile and the string spacing too narrow for the new set up, besides which it was grooved for 8 strings.

New vellum, Aquila strings and saddle, the red painted, iron tone ring can bee seen through the pierced chrome  tension hoop

The 12 little chrome "Z" clips fastened to the pan rim support the tension hoop screws.

I inlaid an old, New Zealand, 1936 sixpenny piece featuring an extinct native Huia bird, in keeping with my coin theme on my old drum kit. The new nut and the reworked machine heads can be seen in this image too.

The result is a very bright and playable little banjo ukelele, it does take a while for the strings to settle in as the ends are loop tied to the tail piece. The vellum is also prone to changes in temperature and humidity. The tone is wonderful though.