I got an email today from a guy who had won one of my banjo rims in a fund raising auction for the MIMF. I've donated a couple/three rims for their fund raising. The guy sent me a photo of the completed banjo.
Hold on! The guitar related stuff is coming.
The fingerboard of the banjo in the photo was inlaid in the same pattern as one I did for the first inlay class that MIMF did in 2001. I had inlaid this as a guitar fingerboard and then stopped making guitars (until last year) so I cut it down for a banjo and still haven't used it.
The reason why I'm talking about this here is that when I looked back in the MIMF archives to see the photos of the inlay class student homework, I started seeing names that I've been seeing constantly in forums that I frequent now - like this one. Notably, Chris Paulick and Mike Dotson.
Now I get to say that Chris and Mike and I went to different schools together!
(Pretty far to go for not much of a punch line, I know. But, you get your humor where you can!)