Clifton...thanks for this discussion. I am in love with the minstrel banjo, right now. They have friction tuner. I have several newly acquired Prust Tackhead. My question: How do you explain to an innocent doe eyed person how a friction tuner works? I try to explain it in horizontal vectors of energy but that does not work. I even compared it to a capstan on a schooner that draws up the anchor and chain but no luck. Also, do you drill the hole in the head at an angle away from the strings or straight through?
Thanks! I wonder if I could build a pencil sharpening tool to make pegs. I want to start building acoustic instruments without special hardware and eliminating machine tuners is probably going to be the most important. That said, they can also be more compact or robust than machines.
Cool! But then? U make holes and start tuning and turning. So it has to stick. Now that mechanism would be very interesting. U have to lock it. U proly made a video on it. I'll go find it. Thx! Great upload!
I used to keep honeybees, so I still have several pounds of 100% beeswax laying around the house. Pure beeswax on the peg and the n the hole works well. Others use violin rosin.
@@CliftonHicksbanjo I just figured out the steampunk version of a tuner. A hose clamp. U would have to cut it off so you can attach the hoseclamp to the guitar . Then attach the string to the moving part of the hose clamp. Use a screwdriver to tune the guitar or banjo or whatever. If the mechanism looks horrible it can be in the back. So the string goes through the wood and the tuning mechanism is a little less obvious. Lol. After tuning, throw the screwdriver into the guitar and it wont get lost. Lol.
Do you recommend any particular wood for making tuning pegs? I hear mahogany is the best, but if you can't get any of that is there others that are also good?
Is there any good way to make a peg and avoid using these tools? I realize at that point it’d probably be easier to just tear the tuners off something else though
Ive come across a few old banjos in my community which had tuners carved with a pocket knife, not ideal but it works when times are hard as they often were back then
Yeah just copy some you pull from another instrument, and build a replica of it to use as a template and one more to affix some sandpaper to ream out the peg holes. I think I'm going to attempt making my own pencil sharpener tool or modify and old one. Look up homemade dowl, it's pretty much the same but you're going to need a taper.
Does Having the 5th string pegged like you seem to prefer allow you to not have to have a nut or screw head for the string to ride in? What are some other advantages?
