thanks for the Barlow knife information! I like tools that have only ONE function; the Swiss Army Knife has never turned me on.(But I digress) the Barlow looks beautiful. I wonder if what my father had (and I found in his dresser drawer) was a Barlow?
Banjo tunings: An awful lot of modal tunes are played in what Pete Seeger called "mountain minor" in his book, and Clarence Ashley called "sawmill" tuning: gDGCD. Almost everybody who plays Coo Coo Bird plays it out of this tuning. I HAVE played Pretty Polly from that tuning but without words from the Master (Mistress?) am unwilling to state this is how it WAS done, only that it can be. And usually sounds pretty good too!
I haven't tried tose 'triplicate' tunings (nice name!!) in years; learned them so I could sound like Peggy Seeger's playing of Willie Moore; she calls them "dulcimer ' tuning.