Laurel Mountain Machine Works

Laurel Mountain Machine Works Providing historic banjo and fiddle restoration services. Successors to Smakula Fretted Instruments.

I did this repair for a friend's employer, a local lumber company. It's the spindle out of an Alamo side boom mower they...
04/22/2026

I did this repair for a friend's employer, a local lumber company. It's the spindle out of an Alamo side boom mower they use for road maintenance. One of the 3/4“ bolts that attaches the blade carrier to the spindle broke off below the spindle surface, a problem that was further complicated by an attempt to burn it out with a cutting torch. The manufacturer won't sell just the spindle- you have to buy the entire spindle, bearings, and housing as an assembly, to the tune of about $3500. After thinking on various ways to repair the torched hole, I ended up just rotating the spindle 45 degrees and drilling/tapping four new holes.

I know these photos don't really tell the whole story, particularly due to the fact that I never took an "after photo. My skill set is a lot more applicable to manipulating metal and wood than it is to manipulating social media.

Business has been so good that I've taken on an apprentice.
04/20/2026

Business has been so good that I've taken on an apprentice.

Instead of spending the morning engaged in some sort of gainful employment, I made a replacement thumb nut for the miter...
03/23/2026

Instead of spending the morning engaged in some sort of gainful employment, I made a replacement thumb nut for the miter gage on my Rockwell carbide grinder, which had a generic 1/4“-20 hex nut substituted for the missing part. Turn, drill, tap, clearance drill, knurl, part, and chamfer. Not every step is pictured here, as my content creation skills lag far behind my thumb nut creation skills and I forgot to take photos at certain key points.

Part two of Boucher tuner repair. The round holes in the washers I made last week are filed square, and, once fit, the b...
03/13/2026

Part two of Boucher tuner repair. The round holes in the washers I made last week are filed square, and, once fit, the button shaft ends are peened over with a small hammer to hold everything together. I learned this technique from my dad, on a larger and hotter scale, working with him in the blacksmith shop as a kid.

The k***s also got a brief soak in some dye to bring the color a little closer to the originals. Still left to do is some chemical aging of the "fresh" metal, so that it doesn't stand out so much.

Should be good for another 160-plus years.

A.few shots of replacing missing bone k***s on some 1870s mechanical tuners. Initially, I intended to create a jig to re...
03/05/2026

A.few shots of replacing missing bone k***s on some 1870s mechanical tuners. Initially, I intended to create a jig to recreate the curved surfaces, but eventually realized that shaping my hand would be faster and would probably better match the originals, which I suspect were also shaped mostly by hand.

Once the shaping is done, they are steeped in coffee to emulate the color of the originals. These originals were a particularly yellow hue, so will also get a soak in a dye bath in addition to the coffee treatment.

This style/era of tuner often had the k***s affixed to the shafts by sliding a tiny brass washer on after the k**b, and then peening the end of the steel shaft to keep everything together. Those brass washers were also missing, so I had to make a few up, in addition to gently forging the upset out of the shaft ends so that there was enough material to re-peen.

Tune in next week for final assembly.

A lathe can be a milling machine, if it tries hard enough. Used the EE as a mill to shorten 30 banjo hooks. Due to hooks...
01/31/2026

A lathe can be a milling machine, if it tries hard enough.

Used the EE as a mill to shorten 30 banjo hooks. Due to hooks being a hook, and having to go in the collet from the back, chucking them in the lathe spindle and using a parting too (in the traditional fashion) would have required taking the collet entirely out of the spindle for every cut. Reversing the work and the cutter sped things up considerably.

Using a collet block in the mill vise, on the actual milling machine, would have been another option... but using the lathe tool post provided automatic indexing, and also meant I didn't have to clean off all the crap that's accumulated on the milling machine table.

A big thank you to .joel for this photo, found between the pages of a piece of sheet music from the collection of Eli Ka...
10/03/2025

A big thank you to .joel for this photo, found between the pages of a piece of sheet music from the collection of Eli Kaufman. It shows, presumably, George Reams, holding the personalized B&D Ne Plus Ultra shown in my last post.

It's fun to have the opportunity to work on an instrument like this once in a while. It's a B&D Silver Bell Ne Plus Ultr...
09/03/2025

It's fun to have the opportunity to work on an instrument like this once in a while. It's a B&D Silver Bell Ne Plus Ultra No. 7 "Montana Special". An original five string, which is fairly rare, as tenor banjos were all the rage during this era. Currently owned by the grandson of the original owner, George Reams of Columbus, Ohio. The Hartnett Tone Bar was most likely his addition. It didn't need much... cleaning, setup, some Rhinestone replacement, and some tinkering with the B&D "Soft Pedal" mute mechanism.

This (likely) Rettberg & Lange built El Cheapo has some family provenance connected to Uncle Dave Macon. Specifically, i...
01/22/2025

This (likely) Rettberg & Lange built El Cheapo has some family provenance connected to Uncle Dave Macon. Specifically, it belonged to the current owners family, and Uncle Dave broke the peghead off by falling on the instrument. The banjo is in sad shape generally, and was never much of an instrument to start with, but the current owner wants it put back together enough to be strung up and played. The peghead repairs were previously done, but the original inlay was lost, so recreating it was today's project.

Interesting G. C. Dobson "Matchless" banjo, with a rosewood neck, extensive heel carving, "double spun" rim, bound finge...
01/21/2025

Interesting G. C. Dobson "Matchless" banjo, with a rosewood neck, extensive heel carving, "double spun" rim, bound fingerboard, and unusual peghead shape. Like many of its kind, it suffers from deteriorated dyed maple fittings that pretty much turn to dust when touched. The peghead overlay (which was only held on by the tuners) is intact, and will be reinstalled, but the fingerboard is crumbling and will be replaced.

The likely maker of this instrument, for labeling by the Dobsons, is J. H. Buckbee of New York city. They are primarily known for the thousands of low-end banjos they cranked out of their factory, but examples like this are a reminder that they were capable of building instruments at any price point.

Some before and after shots of the Fairbanks Senator from earlier this year, with the peghead that was apparently repair...
12/28/2024

Some before and after shots of the Fairbanks Senator from earlier this year, with the peghead that was apparently repaired by a blind man with an essential tremor. It got a new ear, new peghead veneer with original inlays, and finish work. It also got a backstrap, which wouldn't have been an original appointment in a Senator, but it hides the ear graft and many people wouldn't know any different.

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Montrose, WV

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