02/10/13 update

This Piccolo Banjo has serial #9301, which makes it circa 1890 - 1894 according to the Mugwumps website. 

It came to me with gut strings and a ripped skin head.  I put  on a Yellowstone head with a 1/8" square brass flesh hoop.  Pot is 7 1/4" dia, neck length is 10".  I learned recently  that Stewart used "neck length" instead of "scale length" to describe the size of his banjo necks.  For the record, the scale length on this banjo is 14 5/8"  Fret position markers at 5, 7, 10, 14.

The pot metal has surface tarnish but is not degraded or corroded.  Underneath the patina is a shiny, intact, nickel-plated surface.  I wiped off the loose surface dirt with a damp cloth and left the patina intact.

The pot wood is gorgeous.  This wood would take a high polish with paste wax, but I just wiped off the surface dirt and left the haze intact.  I read once where a collector said that they didn't want an old restored banjo to look "wet"..... that statement stuck with me, and I agree with it.

This nut appears to be just a place-holder, since it wouldn't really work.  I'll shape a new ebony nut.  Nylgut Minstrel-gage strings.  Ditto non-wet-appearing wooden surface. 

The banjo has celluloid violin pegs.  It was missing one of the tuners for the peghead and the 5th string peg.  I had some celluloid take-off pegs that match pretty well.  The peghead tuner in the foregound is one of the replacements.  It's dirtier than the originals but the celluloid color is about right.  I'll buff off some of the tenacious dirt with very fine steel wool until the color matches.  I'm glad to see that no-one drilled out the original pegholes to install more modern tuners.

 This banjo uses the dowel yoke with wooden wedges.  The wedges were missing.  I'll shape some wedges from some take-off, ebony violin pegs.  The neck is very true, and it doesn't appear as though I'll need to re-set the neck to get good action.

This banjo, like many Stewart banjos, has "commmon sense" tailpiece that is missing the celluloid  rosette.  I understand that some of Stewart's lower-grade banjos  didn't get the rosette, but this banjo deserves one.  A colleague said that he fashioned rosettes from vintage, celluloid toiletry pieces.  I found a celluloid hairbrush at a flea market last winter and I've been looking for an excuse to make up a rosette or two.  The rosette has hexagonal symmetry, and the bristles in the hairbrush (which I cut off) have sockets that form a hexagon around a circle that is the correct diameter.  This brush might work as-is, or else I might laminate un-pierced pieces of it together to make a blank with which to turn a rosette.

Linda found this banjo key at an antique store in Centre Hall.  For some reason I get pleasure out of using an old SSS key on an old SSS banjo. The nut diameter on this banjo is very large and Linda's key fits.