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 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. |
 Here he is at one of the ... four? ... bandsaws in his shop (I'm SO green with envy!) doing the rough-cutting into the mostly-circular shape of the final pot. |
 Now over to the spindle-sander for final shaping of both the inside and outside of the "pot". "Doc" is very careful of the fine dust of woodworking, always wearing masks while working and also running one of the best dust-collection systems I've yet seen anytime his machines are on. A wise and safe man! |
 Here he holds the "pot" and the neck that is of the same wood and already glued and rough-cut to shape, with the slots for the metal frets also cut. |
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