Aakoo
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Everything posted by Aakoo
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Electric mandolin would be fun.. but I have following project idea cooking in my head already. Archtop in style of Gibson L5 CES. But before that I have an unfinished strat that I need to put together.
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Thanks for kind words everybody! I am super excited about this instrument! My musical taste is on the heavier side, and I did not expect to get excited on playing a mandolin, but once I grabbed this thing to my hands and started playing, it felt super natural. Maybe even more natural than the guitar. Last night a added a track with mandolin to two songs, we have recorded year or two back. So yes going to use it in a band context. Let's, see if we decide to remix the song with mandolin, or just keep the current version. Gut feeling is that the mandolin was a bit too much there
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Long time since last! But the mandolin is finally done! I kind of forgot to update this thread as been busy with my life outside the internet's! It took longer than expected, but I'm very pleased with the results. Here below you can find some photos of the instrument and a video of me first time ever really playing a mandolimandolin.
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I consulted a more senior builder some time back, and he suggested to make the top a bit thinner than in the plans, as the top wood is birch, not spruce, so that is what I did. I chiseled some 1 mm off the top, from the inside. That's about it what I've been doing on the top tuning. I might still take a bit more wood off during the summer months, but let's see. I find the tuning a bit too much of voodoo for me, as I am not very sure, what the end result should be. That said, I guess just trust my gut feeling here
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Had to do a search on forum what is IPA bust. I actually had thought somewhat that kind of color scheme. Now I know what it's called here!
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Long silence since last time.. The mandolin has progressed slowly, and I've been a bit busy and not logging in to my computer after working hours that often, so I haven't had the time to update this thread. We still have one session left for this season, after that we start a summer break from the workshop. The flame maple fretboad is glued on: I used abalone markers. Also used same flame maple as headstock veneer. I kind of think turned out pretty nice looking. The head stock looks non-symmethrical on the photo, but it's that bad as it looks here. The volute on the neck was more or less an accident: didn't plan to have volute, but when I was shaping the neck, the volute short of shaped it self. I think it looks good here, Next week, I will install the side fret markers, and finalize the top binding.Perhaps, if I have some time to design a nice headstock decal. During summer, I plan to fret the finger boardm and next season I will start by putting on some color + laquer on the top. And then I continue by gluing on the neck, and finally glue on the bottom.. Any suggestions for coloring scheme? I was thinking about amber.
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Yes, I saw the thread yesterday, very cool! Seems like the Mandolin building fever he started with the Sarah's Mandolin thread started spreading, and got back to him Kind of funny, in the building workshop I am attending, I was the first one ever with the idea of making f-style mandolin. I bought the plans, copied them to course leader. Now there are at least 2 mandolins on progress, and 2 mandolins done by people who work faster than me. So the fewer is spreading offline too
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Long time since the last post.. Sorry about that.. I've been insane busy, my wife is working far too much and I have to keep my eyes on our toddler, he's everywhere all the time The instrument building classes started some while ago. The course seems to be extremely popular. I saw the acceptance list on the course. The online course signup started at 11 o'clock, I signed up at 11:00:05, and I was on position 12, At 11:00:30, the course was filled up, in 30 seconds! I have made some progress on the mandolin, but haven't had really time to report about it. So I try to put out a few pictures and comments on this post. First session, I missed due a working trip to Berlin. Next week I started slowly. I didn't really have any idea what I should do, so I decided to start shaping the bottom of the instrument. I really enjoy working with the chisels, I just need better ones. Second session, I continued the work on the bottom. At the end of the session, rough shaping was now done Third session I don't have the photo but I sanded the bottom and started to work on the neck joint. Fourth session, Continued work with the neck joint. Now the neck is set, but the joint needs a bit fixing, as the neck is lining up incorrectly, This was actually also very satisfying part, although the result didn't end being 100% satisfying at once. I have realized that I enojoy far more working on chisels and sandpaper and other silent hand tools, rather than the noisy electric machines. Funny that is exactly opposite to my musical taste, I prefer loud amps and electric guitars, over the acoustic music. I Will try to be more active in the future
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Yeah, it was kinda shot in the dark. I guess Kokkola is not a place where people accidentally drop by during weekends...
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Lovely replies guys, I got a good laugh last Tuesday it was the last session for this season. I got the neck glued and roughly shaped. The bandsaw blade was extremely bad, and cutting the birch strips on sides became almost too thin, but at the end the neck width is just perfect on the tail, where the neck is the widest. I would assume, the neck is fairly strong as the scarf joint is located differently on every layer of the neck strips. Now I need to figure out where I could continue the mandolin during the summer, and hopefully next fall, I will get in to the course again. @Prostheta, next weekend, the weekend after the Easter, there will be a display of Kokkolan kansalaisopisto course products. If you happen to be around here, I suggest you should drop in to see a few nice instruments and more handcrafted products.
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Started with the neck. I suppose traditionally the mandolin necks are one piece, but I am not really after a traditional design. I made a sandwich construction, birch stripe in the middle, mahogany stripes and finally birch on the sides. The scraf joint I made separately on each part, and the joint is placed on different place every time. Yesterdat I run out of time, so currently the neck plank consists only of the center strip and mahogany strips. Today, if I have the time, I will go to the school and finish the neck blank, so that I can start shaping it next week. Will take off some thickness from the mahogany before glueing the birch sides, so the strips won't be as thick as seen in the photo. The head stock end in the photo is on the right, the longer part is the head stock.
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Today, on lunch break from work I decided to glue on the top to the frames. I think I counted 16 clamps.. Not sure though and a bit hard to verify from the photo I let the glue dry some 1½ hours and took of the clamps. Here you can see the result. All went fine, except on tip of the scroll area, the surface was not 100% flat, so there is a very small cap. Nothing serious, and will definietly not be visible after finishing.
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Not really.. I still have to do some shaping to do with the braces before glueing the top. I actually discussed about tuning the top with the course leader, and hes suggestion was just to skip the tuning and focus on having well shaped braces, that are well fit to the top shape. Is there a general guide on the tuning? Edit:looking on few videos, it seems that some builders tune tops after they attached the top to body.
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Mahogany braces it is. Glued and shaped the braces and started sanding the body so that next time I will glue the top to the body. Next week is break again from the course, but I try to get hold of a few more clamps, so I can do the glueing at home
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This week I cut the f-holes to the top and glued the kerfed lining on top side. I was planning to use the electric version of jig saw to do the f-holes, but the blade was so lousy, that I decided to do this by hand. The blade was lousy on that one too, but at least I had far more control on where it went than I would have had on the electric version. Kerfed lining elueing was pretty straight forward. Except on the scroll area, where I was not able to fit any clamps, and had to clamp the linging to the side by pushing wooden strips between the lining strips and the mahoganny scroll. If I ever do a second mandoline, I will deffinitiely use a bit more thick strips to do the linings. Next week, make the top braces. What should you suggest to use as the braces? i suppose spruce is good, but how about using mahogany or birch?
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@Prostheta, I see your Finnish language is very good. The Fingerpori jokes are often difficult also for us, native speakers
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Yes, Old spruce, or six The guitar where the braces are in, was completed last year, so little late for shaving the braces thinner
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I guess it is normal that equipment at schools are misused and get damaged. There's always one or a few airheads in a class, and when the teacher turns back, these guys do dumb things, often breaking things. I know, I've been one. Not a mean one, but young and dumb Funny story about breaking school machinery; a congregation in a village next to my hometown had decided to renew the wooden benches in the old wooden church. The instrument building class leader got hold of one of the old spruce planks, that people had been sitting on and praying for century and a bit more. They decided to cut the wood to smaller pieces. The wood was extremely tough, and they pushed the table saw pretty hard, to cut through. The saw run hot and finally caught fire! The fire department came in, and investigated the place. Luckily the engine just burned, and no further damage happened. Now part of that church bench is used as braces in my first self made acoustic guitar.
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Thanks for the kind words @Andyjr1515! I've been really enjoying this build, althought the progress has been slow. Reason mainly is that I can't work at home with this, and the course I am attending is once a week, during the school season. When I started this, I wanted to do a bit more challenging build. I had done previously a few electric guitars, and an acoustic guitar. Now I had two options in my mind: a violin, or a mandolin. I am not interested on playing violin at all and mandolin has at least something in common with a guitar, so mandolin was my pick here! The course leader, who built a lot of different acoustic instruments decided to give a go to F-style mandolin, He is Using the same set of drawings that I bought. He has the instrument now put together, but not ready yet, and last time I met him he stated that this has been the most challenging instrument he ever built. So I think I made a good choice for the project! Good luck with the semi-acoustic, just go for it! i have a hunch that I will be building a few more instruments later, and arch-top would be also in my list
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I think the sandpaper in the photo is just regular hand sanding paper, not sure where it came from, there was a roll of the 40 grit in my shelf. I used the 40 grit to even some bumps, but turned out that a scraper was also very good for the task. Abranet, is that some special kind of sandpaper?
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Top is carved from underside too, I really enjoyed the chissel work. Unfortunately The photo here under kind of suck, sorry about that. I tried to fit both top and underside on the collage, but didn't work at all. The underside seems very flat on the photo, but it's more curved than the photo shows. Next week the class will have winter break, so I don't expect much progress. I might glue the kerfed linings for the top, but that depends a bit how I find time and if I get to borrow the clamps from the course leader for the task.
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Thanks for the input! i am kind of fixated to the idea of bent plywood.. I would like keep the plywood visible on the corners, kind of nordic plywood based furniture meets 50's television.
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Thanks for the kind words! Today I started with reducing the thickness on the sides of the top. I found a nice way to get the thickness just right. I put a 4mm thick plywood strip between table and the chissel, next to top when carving. This made the chissel not to bite too much in to the top wood, next I drilled some holes under the top, which purpose are to give rough estimate how deep I should carve, to get the top thickness right. After this it was time to start carving. Man, that was fun!
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Hi, I am not really sure if this is the right forum for this, but I've been playing around with idea of making a "mini stack" to be played at home. Idea is to have 1x12" cabinet (or two stacked) and amp head in plywood enclosure that would follow the design as seen in image below. Now I would need some input from woodworking gurus on the forum. What would be the most suitable way to get the sides done? Currently I am playing with idea of making a mold for the sides and laminate the sides from multiple thin layers of plywood, Do you have any experience how thick plywood could be used here so that it still bends without cracking? I have thought that if I made the mold modular, so that I'd have rounded corner blocks and I could change the straight center pieces that could be attached together, I could fairly simply produce different sized enclosures, in this case the amp head and the cabinets, How about the pressure, how much pressure should I need when laminating the sides? I was planning that I'd use some planks length of the depth of the cabnet + 10cm, Put two planks on top of each other, drill holes at the end of the planks, and have bolt going throught the planks, making the planks as clamps when tightening the bolt, when having the sides between the planks. The planks should be rigid enought that they do not bend when aplying pressure from the ends Any input or ideas I would definitely want to hear from you who have more experience on working with plywood.
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Yes, I bought a cheapish digital caliper as seen in photo below. I just need to fix the tops of the "jaws" having slightly higher knobs. I hope you understand what I try to explain. I am a bit exhausted from not sleeping so well in a few weeks, so I think it affects my ability to produce verbal output on foreign languages
