March 29, 2012

9:00am - 5:00pm

Added wooden cleats to prevent future cracking problems.

 Cleats and sound bars all sanded and looking pretty.

Top shot.

Time to glue the top to the sides!!

But first, we did a dry run making sure everything fitted properly.

OK, now for the real deal...time to glue.

This shot shows all the various clamps used to hold the top to the sides.

Here's the top all glued up and drying.

Side shot of the glue job.

Proud builder holding the glued top.

March 27, 2012

9:00am - 5:00pm

'f' holes are cut and sound bars are sanded to fit the inside of the top.



 Next, I glued the sound bars to the inside of the top.

Next step is to route the channel in the headstock where the binding will be install. I'm using the Dremel tool to create the channel. 

Here's a shot of the headstock with the channel route around all edges. I'll next cleanup these cuts to prep for the binding installation.

March 22, 2012

9:00am-5:00pm

OK, today I finally finished carving and sanding the inside of the top!

 This first shot shows the inside after I blended the ovals. The pencils marks shows the approximate location of the sound bars.

Here's the inside after sanding with 100 and 150 grid sandpaper.

This is the outside of the top prior to drawing the 'f' holes.

This is the template used to draw the 'f' holes and their tracing on the top. The line connecting the 'f' holes is the location of the bridge. This line was located by first measuring the finger board to the 12 fret. When the finger board in mounted, the 12 fret location will be at the flat area next to the curl. You then measure the same distance from the flat area to the bridge location. This means that the 12 fret is center between the nut and the bridge.

This shows the holes drilled for the 'f' holes and a pilot cut between them. Next I'll hand carve the remainder of the 'f' holes.

But, before completing the 'f' holes, I made and fitted the sound bars. The upper bar in the picture is the bass and the lower is the treble. These bars were hand sanded to conform to the concave surface of the top.  

March 20, 2012

9:00am - 4:00pm

We positioned the top onto the sides and traced lines for both the inside and outside edges of the sides. Using the grid lines marked previously, we drew ovals around 4 sections. These sections were then scraped down to a thickness as follows: inner most oval 4.2mm, next oval 3.8mm, next 3.3mm, next 2.9mm. Here a shot showing most of the ovals completed.

Here I'm checking the thickness of the outer most oval.

Another shot showing most of the ovals scraped.

So far, total hours in the shop working on the mandolin is 76!

March 16, 2012

11:00am - 5:00pm

Time to glue up the inlays. Each piece was pushed into place to make sure it was seated properly. A thin layer of epoxy was then spread over all the inlays. Finally, I went around and popped any air pocket that had formed around the edges of each piece.

Here's a shot of all the inlays epoxied into the headstock.

After letting everything setup for around 2 hours, we sanded the headstock on the table sander.

Now, back to sanding the underside of the top. We first marked out a grid that will be used to control the thickness of the different sections.

March 15, 2012

9am-4pm

Today I finished cutting out all the mother of pearl designs and fashioned all the holes in the headstock where they will be inlaid.

This first shot is a dry layout of all the designs. Went with the D inside the C (my initials) at the top. After dry fitting, I glued each piece to the headstock using a light amount of wood glue. After the glue setup, I scribed around each piece. I then rewetted the pieces and removed them leaving the scribe marks.

The pic show the scribe marks for each piece and the first cutout using the Dremel tool.

Here's the headstock showing all cutouts.

This shot show each piece laid into it appropriate cutout.

This shows the whole neck. Next step will be to epoxy the piece into the cutouts. We'll mix some coloring in with the epoxy that matches the ebony. Final result will be inlays that look like they were precisely put into the ebony.

Nothing to do with my work, but here's a pic of Mark Bluett playing his recently built  Bouzouki. It sound great!

March 14, 2012

9am-5:30pm

OK, time to start cutting out the mother of pearl! Just to recap....here's the design I'm shooting for:

Using the above design, each piece was cutout of the paper and super glued to the mother of pearl.

Using a tabletop jig saw, each mother of pearl piece was rough cut. I then finished each piece using several small files. Here's the finished products:

Note: I'm still unsure which letters I'll be using, that's why there's 3 different ones shown.

All I have to do now is inlay the mother of pearl pieces into this headstock!!

Next, I spend some more time (actually a lot of time!) getting the final shape of the outside of the top. I used sandpaper to complete this. I have the bridge laying on the top around where it will ultimately be located.  

Here's a shot of the neck, top and sides. Nothings glued together, yet!

Now it's time to start shaping the underside of the top. This is gone by drilling guide holes in the underside of the top. These holes will be used to gauge how much wood to carve from the underside. The tool shown below is used to control the drill press depth for the guide holes. It controls the depth down to a tenth of a millimeter.

 After setting the gauge to the correct depth, the top is place on the gauge and you start drilling holes.  

Here's a shot showing the holes drilled for the 2 most inner rings. Each ring is drilled to a specific depth. Inner most ring is 4.5mm, next ring is 4.1mm, next is 3.6mm and the outer most ring is 3.2mm.

This shows all the depth holes drilled:

Now, using the depth holes as a guide, we start carving the concave of the underside of the top using finger planes.

This is the underside of the top after carving to the bottom of each depth hole. Next, I'll clean this up and finish the top to a final depth of:

inner most ring: 4.2mm, next ring 3.8mm, next 3.3mm and outer most ring 2.9mm.