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 Featuring two of his banjos, to show the intricate and detailed work he does. Note how one of his cats is very much at home in the shop! |
 Note both the details of the wood-joining he's done on the "pot", the wood ring of the banjo, before finishing the shape and adding the fittings, and how few tightening brackets he uses. Entirely adequate, and yet designed not to catch on as many things ... like your clothing while playing. |
 A fairly unique "fretless" banjo, with a brass "fretboad" without frets. You need to be an experienced and ACCURATE player for this instrument, but the sound is gorgeous! Also note the carved cat he brought back from a Medical Teams International year-long mercy stint in Africa recently. He also brought a shipping-container of wood with him ... oh my gosh, it's incredible stuff ... |
 Showcasing two of Pat's innovations ... a new style of playing, called "rashing", involves fast hard strumming with the thumb right in this area ... and results in bruised and battered thumbs and knuckles from striking the neck and the brass ring that holds the stretched head of the banjo. You can see both the thumb-shaped recessed area on the neck, and the way his brass rings are ground lower around the neck to eliminate mangled hands. |
 Another look at two of the seven or eight MAIN Pat Huff-original design ideas: the thumb-shaped rashing relief and the modified brass ring ground lower around either side of the neck to prevent mashed knuckles on the metal. |
 We had a WONDERFUL time with Pat playing one of his banjos for quite a while. He's a talented musician besides being a fine doctor and amazing wood-worker. This is in a log cabin he built with his own hands, and in the background you can see some of the "pots", the rings of wood that are the "base" of a banjo, awaiting their finishing touches. |
 Pat in his shop, in the area where the hand-work of assembly starts. As a woodworker, his entire shop made me green with envy, but just look at the amazing array of small hand-tools and wood off-cuts and trim pieces he has! I'd be smiling if that were my shop too! |
 Pat holding the first "recipe" he made for building banjos. It's got all the measurements and notes he made as he went along so that he could make another without "re-inventing the wheel". It's a wood-worker thing ... I understand! |
 This is a "pot glue-up" starting the process to become a banjo. You can see all the layers of wood stacked and glued together. I think this one is 6 layers of wood, each one a "circle" of 12 side (or "dodecagon") of wood strips, miter-cut from the same "stick", then glued end-to-end around the "circle". He's cutting here to get the rough "height" of the pot. |
 Now he's marking the outer shape of the "pot", mostly circular but with a few important irregular places, especially where the neck will join and exactly opposite the neck. |
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