Hello all fellow Banjoists,
I have a project my teacher and I are shortly about to undertake. In the vein of gas-can banjos...It all started on a trip down to Fl with the girlfriend to visit her parents and to pick up some of her stuff from their place. We get down there and as we are going through the boxes of her stuff she had accumulated on one of her trips driving cross country I pick up an entire turtle shell. Bottom and top still together with...most of the skeleton still intact inside it. Seems she found it dead and buried it near a red ant nest to let them er...finish it with age. She came back a week later and none but bones and shell was left. So she said to me the thing I was thinking anyway, but she looks me directly in the eye and says "I bet you could make a banjo out of that!". I have her father and mother as witnesses so no court will hold me accountable. Anyway, I brought this idea to my teacher who is accomplished at cobbling banjos together out of stuff and he got extremely excited, more so maybe then I. But we've taken it on as a kind of pet project to make this into a playable turtjo. We want it to 1. be completely structurally sound (i.e. you can pick it up and it won't go out of tune and it can stand up to normal playing) 2. make it appear as if the turtle shell is unaltered (not jig-sawing a hole in it to sink a banjo head into it) 3. make it hold a tune and sound somewhat like a banjo, and finally 4. make someone stop and go "what the **** is that thing". We have come up with some ideas, but I wanted to hear from others before continuing. I'm going to shortly be getting a neck/head, rim, tone ring (maybe), bridge, etc...and lots of epoxy. I would like to know what parts/methods of construction you would use if you were in this situation and what you would buy (if anything) that you would use to build said Turtjo.
I was thinking of either getting a overlarge acoustic guitar head and shaping to down to a slight shovel shape to make it look like a turtle shape then putting four very old style tuner pegs in to look like legs (making the head look like a turtle). Or possibly making the head look like a turtle's head mounted on the neck...that or just getting a very normal head and using the spare small deer antlers I have sitting around as tuning pegs. Other then this we figured cutting and epoxying wood blocks in the openings of the neck/back to sink two tension rods and mount the neck to, then drilling small holes through the belly of the shell and mounting the bridge directly to the belly and a tail piece at the back of the shell. I know it won't be loud, but the point isn't to play in front of a crowd, it's just to make it playable. I figure the natural hollowness of the shell with it's natural openings will carry and project well enough that I don't have to drill F holes in the shell. I also think that putting an entire resonator inside the shell is pointless and would make it unnecessarily heavy.
Anyway, I just would like to hear some feedback! I should get the turtle shell in the mail someday soon this week, pictures of the build will follow as it progresses!
P.s. I know that there is an acoustic guitar in the museum of natural history made out of the shell of a armadillo. If a 6 string can do it, a banjo can do it better!