Thank you. Yes, it was a very mediocre instrument. The original intent was to add a little carving and make some necessary repairs. The project grew a bit as I learned more about construction. Garyn Jones, the luthier at the Woodshed in Oberlin went through the build with me. The end result is a nice instrument, one of a kind, with me getting a good education along the way.
The head was a challenge, to say the least. That is the second skin I put on it. The first one did not fare so well. I ended up mounting the first one twice and then discarding it after makeing a bunch of mistakes.
For this head, I started with a large antiphonal page that had been damaged over time. It was a fragment in many ways. I did not want to ruin an intact artifact. Here is a pic of what I started with.
I cut a corner off the page and soaked it in water to see what was going to be dissolved or washed away. The dyes used in the Spanish monestaries were, in large part, mineral dyes and inks. They used some plant dyes, but the mineral dyes had better color density and resisted fading. I got lucky and nothing dissolved or faded.
Then I put the rough-cut vellum in water and started the process.
To minimize distortion, and make my chances of being successful higher, I did the following things:
1. I soaked the vellum for the minimum amount of time to make it flexible. I didn't want it to be too pliable, which would have made it riskier in terms of distortion.
2. As I mounted, stretched and tightened, I used a soft brush to add more moisture so it was consistently soft, but always just on the edge of pliability.
3. I was not concerned with any leftover vellum, so I used the largest piece possible so as it came up and around the flesh hoop, I'd have a lot of material to work with and lots to grab and stretch.
4. Once I got the flesh hoop on , the tension ring mounted and all the hooks in place, I barely tightened the hooks and tried to make them all the same tension, at least as far as my fingers could sense. If I were doing this every day. I would build a torque wrench to use for equal tightening.
5. Then I let it start to dry. Every 2-3 minutes I'd check pliability on different parts of the head just with my fingers pressing down gently. I added water to parts that were drying too quickly.
6. Once it had been in place for about 30 minutes, I started tightening down the tension ring using a half-turn on each nut. I would go around, tighten, let the vellum dry a few minutes, brush with water as needed to keep it drying evenly, then tighten the nuts again using only a 1/2 turn. I repeated this process, slowly and carefully, until the tension ring was down where I wanted it. Then trimmed some of the excess away so it was not resting on the head. I wanted it to dry as evenly as possible.
7. Once the tension hoop was where I wanted it, I let it dry. I checked it every 5 minutes and brushed on small amounts of water where needed to keep it drying as evenly as possible. This went on for about an hour.
I trimmed the remaining excess off and put in a cardboard box with a lid to slow down the remaining drying time in an attempt to keep it drying slowly and consistently. It was kept in the box for two days and then left on the counter to adjust to humidity in the air.
It was a slow process. But there is very little distortion and wierd stretching. The patterns stayed fairly straight and even. Luckily I had a large enough piece of vellum to place the illuminated "B" in the center, at least visually.
That's how I put it on. Very slowly and gently.
This is the only banjo I’ve tried to install a vellum head.
I figured if I took it slowly and carefully and did not let it get too wet or too dry, I would have the best chance of it working out well.
I’m no expert. I’m guessing I got lucky in many ways.
Here are the pictures I managed to take along the way.
I hope this is helpful and I'm open to comments and suggestions.
Thank you again.
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