Having been led on by several members of the ezFolk forum (www.ezFolk.com), I finally succumbed to the lure of building a cookie tin banjo. I did some research but decided that the simplest and clearest directions were those on www.cookietinbanjo.com.

I started looking for cookie tins and ran across a 3 for $3.99 at my local Walgreen Drug Store. I picked up 3 different shapes, round, octagonal and oblong, thinking, in my eternal optimism, that I would build a banjo, a ukulele and maybe a guitar. I have since changed my ideas to banjo (octogon), maybe a second banjo (round), and, dreaming of another instrument to learn, maybe I'll attempt to make a dulcimer with the oblong tin. We'll see!

After making the choice of tins, I made a trip to the local Home Depot (I actually made the trip for something else, but decided now was the time to get the wood, too) and picked up 2 pieces of 1 x 3 Poplar, one 3' and the other a little over 4' long. Since I am going to make a fretless instrument, I counted on the poplar being dense enough that I wouldn't need a fingerboard. This means that the top of the neck must be level with the top of the cookie tin, so I planned on glueing the 2 boards together to make a thick neck, with the lower piece being long enough to fit through the tin as a dowel rod.

I played around with the fret-finder program on www.stewmac.com and decided that I would make a 24" scale instrument. I did all the calculations and cut the shorter board to length.

I immediately recognized that I should have glued up the two boards first, but so far, par for the course! I then cut the second board to approximate length (yes, it is long enough to go through the tin!), and proceeded to do the glue-up.

After letting the glue dry overnight, I unclamped the assembly and found that, wonder of wonders, things looked good!

So far, so good, now to go and think about that scarf joint!