Fitting the Head

Having cleaned the Tension hoop, Vellum and tone ring as best I could without wanting to damage the vellum with chemicals I fitted the new brackets. Having the metal work knowledge of someone who's spent thirty minutes with Youtube and Google my new brackets aren't perfect but should make it easier to fit the head into the stock than the original bent and mismatched ones.

Attaching them to the head was a bit of a challenge as there's nothing to stop the brackets turning with the bolt. Eventually I settled on holding the head vertically so it was almost hanging by the bracket which I held still with an adjustable wrench as I tightened it with a 6mm socket nut driver. Some of them took a little manipulation to get as straight as I wanted, mostly because the tone hoop wasn't flat having previously been overtightened and partially because the handcut threads in the brackets probably weren't spot on.

The head was a tight fit and after a bit of thought I figured the easiest way to fit it without damaging the pot or vellum was to put a piece of wood over the brackets then with press that against my chest and pull the pot towards me. Given the rounded shape of the pot and the metal stud I'm pretty sure something would've broken if I'd just tried to push the head down into the pot. Once the head was more or less in I used my thumbs to press it home. In hindsight a dot of petroleum jelly on the brackets as a lubricant might've made things easier.

After a little googling about drilling guide holes I discovered the 'self tapping' screws I'd bought were actually self drilling screws (common labelling mistake apparently) so didn't need holes drilling. However after trying to get the first one straight without the slotted head screwdriver slipping out I decided to drill some 0.8mm guide holes slightly shallower than the the screw length to help get them started.

Reattaching Neck and Tailpiece

Having painted and sealed the pot it was time to reattach the neck, tailpiece and the stud at the back which nobody seems to know the purpose of.

I wound up having to use a hammer to get the stud back into place, this damaged some of the woodfiller on the inside so I had to stop and fix that then spray over that. Next up as the tailpiece.

I'd've liked to have electroplated the tailpiece again as the presumably nickel was rather worn but finding a couple of pieces of pure nickel to use as anode and cathode proved impossible locally and too expensive to order online so I gave up on that. The tailpiece is in two parts, the piece the strings attach to which is all the majority of Zither Banjos and Zither Mandolin Banjos I've sen online have and a second piece of metal which goes between this and the wooden pot. The large metal bracket appears to be there to maintain the shape of the pot against the poll of the strings. I've seen this on one other banjo I've seen on the net. Using a small flat headed screwdriver and an adjustable wrench I replaced both parts. They still fitted the original screw holes despite my having reglued the pot. There's a gap of almost 1mm between the top of the pot and the edge of the tailpiece from when I sanded the rim flat again.

Using a  right angled torque screwdriver I reattached the neck. Messing about with difficult to reach slotted screws gives you a new appreciation for the crosshead screws.

Watching paint dry

Having reglued, woodfilled and sanded the pot it was time to repaint the thing. The pot's original black painted finish was pretty worn but I think the finish was closer to satin than gloss or matt -whilst it was havily scuffed on the outside on the inside surface of the pot it will've been protected from contact so I was able to tell it wasn't a heavily scuffed gloss or worn matt surface. I wanted to come up with something close tothe original but without the unpleasant lead content. I opted for a can of Plastikote Satin Black spray paint. It should be pretty durable and protect the aged wood for a long time to come.

Typically I'd've taken it outside, sprayed it, left it to dry, resprayed it and repeated until completed. Unfortunately the best temperature to apply Plastikote is 15-20 degress Ceclius and as we're approaching the tailend of January the temperature is hovering at about zero. Knocking a few nails into a piece of wood to use as handles and sitting the pot on a plastic tub I took it outside, sprayed it then brought it inside to dry.

It looked pretty smart but the paint didn't seem to be properly drying properly. It was sticky and I was able to mark it with finger prints. Not quite the protective coating I'd been hoping for. It may've been because I was spraying in such cold temperatures I suppose. Anyway looking online a few people suggested addressing that by spraying an acrylic sealer the top. So that's what I did. Although to try and speed up drying times I let it dry in the utility room with a fan heater running and the window slightly open so the paint fumes had some place to go other than the rest of the house.

However when it was finally dry I decided the indentations from where I'd filled cracks in the wood were too blatant and needed a bit more work. Roughening the surface with 400 grit sandpaper and wiping it down with cotton wool and naptha I applied some more woodfiller, it was a lot easier having finally found an old sculpting tool that'd been knocking about the house for years.

That done I went through the sanding it again, spraying it, waiting for it to dry, respraying it, waiting for it to dry, and so on. After a few coats of paint I sprayed a couple of coats of sealer on it and called it a day.

With a little more filing and filler I could get the surface even better but I don't want to completely lose the instruments age. Spraying the last few coats of black and sealer indoors seems to have made a difference to to the paint drying. Just needs a little work on the tailpiece then I can look at putting it back together and adding some strings and a bridge.

Repairing the pot

I'd been fairly successful in correcting the warped back edge of the pot by rebending and regluing the strip that made up the sides but still needed to reattach the base. Wood glue adheres best to smooth surfaces so using a piece of sandpaper taped to the worktop I sanded the top and bottom edges of the pot sides smooth

Examining the pot sides there were a few hairline cracks visible so I put a little wood glue into them to hopefully stop them spreading. Hardly surprising to find a few cracks really.

Once the glue was dry I worked a little woodfiller into the crack and also used a bit more to tidy up the join on the pot side and fill another crack. I kept the filler to a minimum.

The base wasn't flat so I gave it a soak in boiling water and clamped it to a piece of aluminium. so it'd dry flat. It didn't work though. The disc cracked across the middle so I wound up soaking it and clamping it again as two different halves. Looking at the grain I'm pretty sure it's made up from two pieces of wood glued together.

In the end I got it flat as two separate halves and tested the fit.

Gluing the sides to the three parts of the base (two halves and a tiny piece) proved tricky because the wet glue was so slippery. eventually using a few clamps and a piece of wood below the pot for them to press against I got the thing in place although the edges of the split down the middle weren't married up
as close as I'd've liked. I used a bit much glue so once again there was a lot of run off. I figure it's better to scrape off the excess later than have a joint that starved.

 
I left the glue till the next day to reach full strength. As the halves of the pot base were flush to each other there were areas where it protruded beyond the pot sides. The holes where there had been nails from a previous repair were also clearly visible.

I pushed some wood filler into the cracks and nail holes and also right around the edge of the sides inside and outside of the pot. I suspect the white stuff I'd originally found below the black paint was some sort of filler rather than a primer.

As well as pushing the filler into the gaps I applied so it was proud of the wood surface. After giving it a couple of hours to dry I then set about filing the edges of the pot base so they were level with the sides and sanded the filler down to the level of the wood -or as close as I could get it anyway. This meant removing most of the filler visible from the picture above. Using the file and sandpaper I also rounded off the new edge of the pot base as it'd been rounded originally.

 I wasn't so worried about finishing the inside as it'd been pretty poorly finished originally and would be hidden under the vellum. Using a few different grades of sand paper I once again removed most of the wood filler. Whilst the outside of the pot is curved the inside is actually flat.

In the middle of the back of the pot there's a metal stud. I'm not sure what it's for. Suggestions on Banjo Hangout have suggested on a regular banjo a stud may be in the back to hold a resonator although on a zither banjo the pot is the resonator. It may be for protection or possibly just for decoration. Anyway rather than try whacking a nail through the pot I'd just repaired, pulling it out and inserting the stud again I located the centre of the pot and drilled a small hole to put the stud back in once the pot is painted.

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.