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Pictures of my two mandolins in construction -best pictures of each |
The back - hard maple - carefully drilled down to required depths on a pillar drill to give a starting guide |
There is a mandolin back plate in there somewhere - just got to dig in and find it |
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This is the other back - this maple was so hard - continuously blunting the gouges |
I even purchased one of those Australian power gouges to carve it but you still need hand gouges for the detail |
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You can see from the picture how hard this maple was - even with a sharp gouge it kept fighting me and tearing - wild grain - pretty but pushed my inexperience to the limit |
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Here I was carefully trying to maintain the natural slope of the scroll - that is some incredibly complex shape and i can remember being continously confused by it - measuring - measuring and measuring - slow work |
The front - spruce - a relief after the hard maple |
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You just cannot realise the beauty of this design until you try and reproduce it |
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The jig with the ribs to thickness - real sharp plane needed to stop the maple tearing out |
experimented with different molds - I found MDF useful to make the mold from - corners are mahogany cut out on the bandsaw |
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neck and tail blocks also mahogany |
Bending the ribs was a pig - particularly the tight scroll - much tighter than any of the violin bouts - contrary to violing making advice (violin ribs are much thinner). I finally soaked the ribs for a couple of minutes which made bending much easier - make them too wet and they crease like cardboard on the figure. Bending is an art form in its own right and experience through failures and breaking is the only way. |
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the complex shape was a pig to cramp up - I had to do it in stages with the sharp corners first |
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These corners were difficult and incredible accuracy was needed as you can see |
The neck block was hard to cramp up - took a long time to get the ribs to make full contact with the mold and the neck block - no room for error here to ensure a good glue joint between neck block and ribs - bending the ribs accurately was essential |
I found grease-proof paper was useful - bought a roll of this on eBay - stops the glue fixing the ribs to the bench |
I used templates on everything - here are the two I used for the headstock. Be careful - there are many plans for an F5 Mandolin out there and although they look the same they are all different and varied - mine came from Stewart MacDonalds |
It is essential on the headstock scroll to piece in a plug of maple with its grain running in the opposite direction to the grain of the headstock - I inlaid this in 15 mm - note it does not go right through so it cannot be seen on the back of the headstock - the ebony veneer will cover the face hiding this reinforcement for the headstock scroll |
The ears allow the headstock shape reducing the amount of timber required for the neck |
The neck and centre part of the headstock is of course out of one piece of timber - the neck shape is gut on a bandsaw and shaped with rasps - I use rasps with a random tooth pattern which can be seen to the right of this picture |
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I should have routered the channel for the trust rod before shaping the neck - having the straight edge would have made the routering much easier - I created a problem for myself - in my violin making course we were always told to leave the detail work to the very end - like shaping the neck to the very end - trouble is you do tend to want to rush through and get it looking like what it is supposed to do - so I should have had more patience here |
Until I started working on the F5 I never realised how amazing the geometry of the instrument was. Trying to duplicate the curves of that amazing headstock I struggled to work out how I could cut it - i eventually realised that I had to make a wedge to support the headstock and keeping it at the same angle to the vertical blade all the complex angles fell into place. I remember thinking how amazing Loyd Loar was in designing this instrument. |
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The same wedge was used for the bobin sander |
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There is nothing that is square on this instrument |
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This is the headstock of the second mandolin - I cut it out before realising I need to put the reinforcing plug in - but it wasn't too late. |
A centre line needs to be establsihed at the very beginning when you have parallel edges to work to - need to maintain this centre line all the way through the job as it is your only guide |
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Cutting the dovetail is always tricky and fitting it to the neckblock before gluing the neck block to the ribs is crucial |
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Here are the two headstock veneers - one for each of the two mandolins i am making - I find it easier to work on two instruments at a time as each stage enables me to get use to the skills required |
more to come when I get some time ... |
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