Test fitting the head

Having stripped the pot back to bare wood I decided to check the fit of the head before gluing the base back on. After all this antique piece of wood has just undergone a lot of punishment with steaming, bending, regluing and having the old paint stripped. When I first took out the banjo head it had taken me about an hour to prise out as the fit was so tight.

Good job I checked it first. The head wouldn't go in at all. I'd removed the two oversized replacement brackets so in theory the head should've been a far loser fit than it had been. I'm also pretty sure I'd glued it correctly at the sides, the black paint marked the edges of the glued section so I was pretty certain I hadn't made it any smaller.

I'm starting to suspect that the 6 remaining brackets may also be from another instrument and be a millimetre so too big. They're all a little bent anyway. The brackets were all a little bent out of shape and but I don't think that accounted for the poor fit, more likely the other way round. At some point I'll need to try to straighten them before I properly reassemble the instrument, but that's a while off yet.

Giving the brackets the benefit of the doubt I decided to see if I could soften the wood and get the head back in then let it dry out with it in place.

Into a bath of warm water the pot sides went. Being wood of course it floated so I weight it down with a couple of skewers and a jar. I gave it a little over half an hour to soak then pulled it out gave it a quick once over with a towel as I didn't want to get any water on the vellum and managed to persuade the head into the pot.

The pot sides bowed in where the two brackets were missing, so I took apart a wood clamp and reassembled it reversed so it pushed out instead of clamping together then placed it where the missing brackets would've been. The diameter from the outside edges seems to be 18.6mm across with the head inserted so I jacked the clamp to the same distance and left it to dry again. I'd intentionally not placed the head in it's original orientation because whilst it was far rounder than when it'd arrived part of the rear of the pot was still a bit flattened where the strings had pulled it in I'm hoping the reorient ed brackets will help push the pot back into shape.