building a banjo heel angle jig

[Michael Bruhn]

I have built a jig for shaping the heel joint where it attaches to the rim. degree of angle can be adjusted and now I am modifying it for drilling the hole for the dowel stick or coordinator rods. Seems to work great. I was wondering if anybody has any suggestions for me to add to it. It looks way primitive right now but that is because I couldn't find much information about how to build one so it has been trial and error.

[Dan Pennington]

Show us a photo of yours. You may already have the best method.

[David King]

I'd love to see it. I just did this job on a spindle sander by hand with a fixed angle plate and had to finish up with chalk and hand sanding to get a good fit. It took way to long.

[Michael Bruhn]

i will send some pics when I get some more modifications done. I made a sanding drum just a bit smaller than eleven inches so that when sandpaper is glued on it is exactly (as close as I can get it) eleven inches. Another slightly larger drum is mounted under it to cut the notch for the drum head and tension ring. The drums rotate by hand and rest on a slide on top of the table it is all mounted on. By leaning on the slide with my hip and turning the drum by hand under high pressure I can shape the heel in two or three minutes. I was actually surprised at how accurate it turned out. After the heel is shaped I leave the neck fastened down, pull out the sanding drum and replace it with the banjo rim. This leaves the neck and rim exactly fitted together and I can drill holes for the dowel stick or coodinator rods. The trick is to be able to replace the sanding drum with the banjo rim, thats why I opted for no electric motor. Very safe and accurate.

[Dan Pennington]

Here's my heel grinder. It's attached to my rim cutting lathe. I cut an 11 inch rim from some junk wood, left it on the face plate, and glued on strip of 80 grit sanding belt. It's bolted to my cross slide table, so can move it into the sanding strip.

[David King]

We were doing 15" rims without the benefit of a lathe. The rims were "turned" on a rotary fixture mounted on the milling machine using a 4" long spiral flute cutter. I suppose we could have done the same thing to trim the necks but I wan't thinking..