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Building a banjo neck from scratch can be challenging and very time consuming, especially if you are cutting the heel to fit the pot by hand. The most challenging of those cuts is the one for the one-piece, Gibson style flange. The most challenging material to work with? Very curly maple, and boy, to I have a piece for this project! This was a chunk provided by the customer that we estimated to be 40 years old and it was wide enough so that no ear wood was necessary. This was a very rare treat, and a left-handed neck, to boot. Here we go: Staring at a nice looking banjo neck that is nearly ready for finish is an amazing feeling of accomplishment. Looking at a heel that needs shaping to fit a one-piece flange is a little intimidating, to be quite honest. I only do a couple of these in a year's time, so this one got the honor of becoming my web page addition while I had the opportunity. Most of the necks that leave my shop are built from neck blanks that already have the heel cut by my friends at First Quality Music in Louisville, Kentucky. There are some special jobs, like this one, where it has been requested that I use a piece of wood provided. Again, First quality can do the heel cut for you if you send them your piece, but for you home shop people, this may be a project that you want to tackle some day, just for the experience. I want to say that is is easier to perform this cut when the heel is still square. In this series, I have chosen to do things the hard way. Lucky me. The profile tool I am using is one way to go if you are attempting to make this cut. I use the template you see, top right set of photos, and it takes into account the angle of the neck to accommodate a 5/8" tall bridge. Click on the pictures for a larger view
I check everything, being careful to transfer the lines to the opposite side of the heel in order to make the markings symmetrical. Since this heel's profile has been shaped, I need to know the difference between the width of the neck at the fingerboard and the width at the bottom of the heel. The heel is still a little too long, but I will take care of that when the rest of the work is finished.
A quick calculation and I am ready to make two, temporary spacers that will be taped onto the sides of the heel at the base. These make the heel width the same as the fingerboard width and are taped back from the pencil marks in order to allow the work to be done on the band saw.
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