How to fold an origami banjo
Fold a brown square into a round drum, its corners and edges folded in so a brown rim rings the white head. Fold a dark strip thin into a neck with a pleated nut and a shaped peghead.
You need: A brown square (6.75 cm), a 3.3 x 11.5 cm dark brown strip, scissors, a glue stick and a black and a white pen. Hard, 11 steps, about 25 minutes.
Steps
- Drum: corners in. White side up, fold all four corners in, each about 2 cm. The square becomes an octagon with brown corners.
- Drum: the rim. Fold the four straight edges in by 7 mm. They make a brown rim.
- Drum: close the ring. Fold the four slanted edges in by 7 mm too. Now a brown ring goes all the way round the white drumhead.
- Neck: new strip. Set the drum aside. Take the dark strip, white side up, standing upright.
- Neck: edges in. Fold the long edges in to meet in the middle.
- Peghead pleat. Fold the tip of the neck down on a crease 2.7 cm below it.
- Fold it back up. Fold the flap back up on a crease 3 mm lower. The little ledge is the nut, and the flap above it is the peghead.
- Snip the nut. Snip along the bottom fold of the pleat from each side, 4 mm in, so the neck below can get thinner.
- Slim the neck. Below the nut, fold the neck's sides behind to the middle. The peghead stays wide.
- Shape the peghead. Fold the peghead's top corners behind into a point, and its bottom corners behind on slants so it tapers into the nut.
- Glue it together. Glue the drum over the bottom end of the neck, so the neck sticks up out of the top of the rim.
Ready to pick!
Draw hooks round the rim, frets on the neck, a bridge and tailpiece, five strings and white pegs on the peghead, with a fifth peg on the neck.
How to play
- Hold the neck in one hand and strum the drum with the other: plink, plink!
- Sing a campfire song while you pick.
- Glue it to a card for a friend who loves bluegrass.