FIXING ROADSIDE JUNK
Published · 4:19 · 811 views
About This Video
Van's son finds a little wooden banjo in a garbage pile. The main thing broken is the drum skin, which turns out to be goatskin. They ordered one from Amazon for about seven bucks, soaked it in water for an hour, then accidentally left it in a Ziploc bag for a month and a half. It stank.
The principle: stretch and clamp the wet skin, and when it dries it contracts and gets tight as a drum. Van thought about the puzzle of clamping for about a month, but the stakes were zero. This was garbage. So they winged it, used stripped twist-tie wire as a belt, popped the drum into the banjo, and clamped it. Dried in the sun. It kind of feels like a miracle that it worked. Whoever owned it before engraved her name: Margie Smith, with the mysterious number 412-4567 USN. Was she deployed overseas? Van wishes she had written the date on it. Now it is the boy's little garbage treasure.
Transcript
you just found it right there in the garbage pile all right well let's bring it home maybe we can fix it on the patreon
people sometimes ask me how to get started learning how to repair things and one of the things I say is just find
some old junk that's broken and go for it try to fix it so this was a little wooden I'm going to
call it a b and the main thing that was broken was the drum
skin and I'll show you why at the end I thought it was worth saving this garbage
pile banjo and it was hand engraved in there so we're going to keep it cuz it's so beautiful found out from a YouTube video
that a banjo skin is goat skin and we found one on Amazon for like I don't
know seven bucks or something so you soak it in water for an hour or so or in our case soak it in water for
an hour and then leave it in a Ziploc bag for a month and a half oh oh my God it stinks so bad and the principle about
how this works that we learned from YouTube is that you stretch and clamp the skin and when it dries it
contracts and gets well tight as a drum yeah it's it's starting and our banjo is
kind of inside out the clamps and the drum on a normal banjo are on the outside of the body of the banjo and our
little banjo has the clamps and the frame of the drum on the inside of the body of the little
banjo and this is a good part to talk about the psychology of this repair this was purely for fun I thought about
I thought about stretching and clamping the skin for about a month like the puzzle of it how do you do this is it
going to fall apart but it was totally unnecessary there were no Stakes this was garbage and um
so we just got to kind of wing it and that was fun and maybe it works maybe it
doesn't pop like this we use wire stripped twist ties as a
sort of belt to hold the skin to the frame and then pop the drum into the banjo and clamped it and it went
smoothly you know Thomas that hasn't invented the light B and right and he invented movies he invented the motion picture camera and it doesn't
have the top on right it doesn't have the top on and it's not seated properly in here but it's junk that we
found in the garbage so it doesn't have to be perfect and that's what makes this project fun zero stress dried outside on the railing in the sun and it kind of
feels like a miracle that it worked because it was so easy and straightforward buddy I think it's
dry I love check it [Applause] [Music] the boy just found this thing in a garbage pile so I should put it back
tomorrow sounds different right sounds better and why I thought it was worth
saving is because whoever owned it before us engraved her name into it and
this mysterious number 412 4567 usn is that United States Navy was Margie Smith deployed overseas and pick
this up in a market somewhere man I just I wish he had written the date on it but now it's the boys and it sort of works and it's his little garbage treasure [Music]
Products & Tools Mentioned
- Amazon goat skin uses — replacement banjo drum skin, ~$7
People Referenced
Thomas Edison, Margie Smith (USN)