Today I worked on the neck, sides, top and fingerboard.
The first thing I did was glue on the 'ears' of the headstock. Normally, this is done prior to gluing on the headstock veneer, but we forgot! Turned out this wasn't a big deal. Just made sure we had a nice tight fit for the 'ears' before applying the glue. BTW, these blocks are used for the two curl designs on the sides of the mandolin headstock.
I next sanded the edge of each of the side points and glued a strip of ebony to each. This is used to dress up the sides of the mandolin. We'll shape these pieces later.
Here's a shot of the finger board I made the other day. The finger board comes with the fret slots already cut. I had to cut the finger board so that it would measure 1 inch at the 'nut' and 1 7/16 inch at fret #15. When the binding is apply to the sides later, the finished width of the fretboard will be 1 1/8 inch at the 'nut' and 1 9/16 inch at fret #15. The notch cut at the bottom of the finger board is for appearance purposes. The final 8 frets will be stepped down later. The white stuff on the finger board is chalk used to make the scribe lines visible for cutting on the bandsaw. To finish the sides, I used the sanding table to make them smooth and straight. Ignore the spruce top under the finger board in this picture!
Next, it was onto starting the mandolin top. Using the spruce we joined and sanded the other days, I first made an outline of the mandolin using the molded sides.
I then started carving the top using a chisel and mallet. Leaving a rounded center, I tapered the sides down to a height of 3/8 inch.
This is a shot of the finished carved top. Finished for this step that is!
I then sanded the top curl down to 3/8 inch using the belt sander. Finally, I took the edges of the spruce top down to 1/8 inch using a router bit in a drill press.
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