Bluesy Banjo Stand

Greetings! I decided I might play my banjo more if I had it sitting out so I threw this stand together out of some scrap wood and leather. We'd already stained the wood blue as a test piece for another project so that made the color choice easy. Enjoy!

I had a rough idea in my head of what I wanted it to look like so I whipped up an outline. A key thing that I would change is reducing the height of the back support. I made the mistake of only measuring across the middle of the body and thus didn't account for the drop in height at the corners.

The irregular shape of each half required a bit of strategy with the cutting (especially without a saber/jig saw). I started by cutting out the rough shape.

I cut out the shape for the bottom rest by making closely-spaced cuts and then cracking out the remaining material. I finished it off with a bit of rasp work and some fine sanding. I should mention that the second half went significantly easier and looked much cleaner. Always remember your safety gear and watch your hands and fingers :-)

I decided to connect the two halves with three 1/2" dowels. It took some time to ensure that all six holes line up correctly.

The blue didn't make the grain of the maple pop as much as I'd hoped but it still turned out alright. The leather I decided to use for the pads was black so I stained the dowels a nice Ebony shade.

I made pads for the back and bottom supports out of some veg-tanned leather that I dyed black with a vinegarroon solution. I used some woodglue and then clamped it down. Epoxy might've made a better bond. the trickiest part was figuring out the elbow cuts for the bottom pads.

Just put the dowels in with some glue and it's good to go! The next step is to find some inspiration and get strummin! Hope ya'll liked it!