A Word About Installing Railroad Spikes

My favorite banjo artist is Dave Hum, who often plays songs in the key of A, fretting the 2nd fret with a capo. This shortens the fret distance and makes it more comfortable to pick the banjo. Since the 5th string doesn't begin until fret 5, we need a separate way to capo the 5th string. The most common method is to install a railroad spike at the 7th fret. I like having the railroad spike on the 7th fret only. This allows you to simply hook the string under the spike and it is now fretted...

I installed my own railroad spikes, but I did some things differently than the following video, to be extra safe. I didn't like the idea of using a power drill, which makes it a lot easier to go too deep or mess up. So I ordered a jeweler's hand-drill from Amazon.com, which let me go nice and slow and take my sweet time while drilling a hole into my $2,200 banjo! You definitely need to drill a small hole, so you don't split the wood on the neck. My father always taught me to never force anything, unless you want to break it!

I also did something different than the video. There is no need to drive a long length spike into your banjo. So I took some side cutters and I cut the railroad spike in half. Now I only needed to drive a shorter nail into my banjo. Also, this removes the sharp piercing edge on the spike that could split the wood. There is no need to drill deep, because the string exerts very little pressure. Also, you want to have a little room left to drive the spike gently into the wood. These are actually the railroad spikes used for model train tracks. They are tiny, as you can imagine, L-shaped nails basically. It didn't take me long to hand drill a small hole. 

When installing the railroad spike, you have a choice to make of pointing the spike inward or outward. I prefer to turn my spike inward toward the neck, so I can simply pull the string with my finger and insert it easily under the spike. I also choose to put the spike inward so I could drill further inward, away from the edge of the neck (to avoid cracking the wood).

Some professional players install spikes on the 7th, 9th, 10th and 11th frets, because they play in a band and need to change keys often. But I only recommend that you install a spike on the 7th fret. The reason why, as I learned the hard way, is that those spikes interfere with your fingering while playing up the neck. The 7th fret never gets in the way for me, but the others do, so I removed them from my banjos. The spikes pry out easily.

For those who don't want to mess with railroad spikes, you can purchase a 5th string capo at Amazon. There's also a sliding capo, which covers multiple frets, but needs to be installed with a couple screws. So there are a few options to choose from. I like my railroad spike on the 7th fret. I frequently play in the key of A, so I use the 7th string spike a lot. When I want to play in open G, I just release the spike by pulling the string a bit and freeing it. Earl Scruggs was the first one who had the genius to think of using a model train railroad spike.