Professor Woozle

Does ash wear too quickly, I wonder? That might explain why, if you end up with an irregularly scalloped board after not all that much playing.

I'm watching with interest now, since I've got a 50W 10" Trace Elliot Celestion kicking around doing nothing that maybe could get used in a future project, when I've finished some of the ones that are on the go! The footpedal speed controller reminds me of one of the mods Van Der Graaf Generator organist Hugh Banton made to his Hammond - he put a pedal-operated speed controller on the rotor motor circuit so he could alter the sound while playing. He used to make some crazy kit for himself and the rest of the band... I looked up that SRV track on Youtube, and loved the official video - I think we can all relate to this (and our partners too)

You really are a glutton for punishment Ash, but that promises to be an absolute stunner of a guitar - looking forward to watching this one progress!

Is it the single coil that's not working with the switch in the middle position? I could be wildly wrong here, as electronics is not something I'm good at, but just wondering if F needs wiring to H to get the single coil output through to the volume pot in the middle position.

Fyldes have zero frets, and here's Roger Bucknall' take on why - https://www.fyldeguitars.com/zero-frets.html

Thinking about it, I suspect variability in the solution is more likely down to the vinegar than the wire wool - you might be better off using non-brewed white vinegar, which is basically dilute industrial acetic acid! The steel wool will most likely be general purpose mild steel, so around 0.2% carbon and probably similar amounts of things like manganese and silicon in it. Going off on the tangent of "not black enough"...

If you really want 99.9% pure iron, then you either need to get hold of some modern electrolytic iron (which I think gets used in some transformer cores) or old wrought iron , which is easy to recognise when it's gone very rusty as it gets a "wood-grain" appearance on it's surface. I guess you'd need to use filings for making up the solution though.

When looking at the Fylde Guitars website late last year, I noticed there was a videos section - it seems Roger Bucknall has decided to share a load of his tools and techniques with the world and I finally got round to watching a few today. The one where he shaped a mandolin neck with a small home-made draw knife was particularly interesting, and I like the neck holder used to clamp the workpiece at a handy angle! You can wince on the bending one too, where he shows a pair of Brazilian Rosewood sides that cracked during the process... https://www.fyldeguitars.com/workshop-videos.html#

You could take it the other way - glue a bit on top and do a violin scroll strat headstock!

I picked up an old Kahler flyer several years ago, at a very good price going by what they generally sell for on Ebay, and I do think the build quality is pretty good - it feels a lot more solid than a Floyd Rose. One day I will get round to fitting it to something...

Much as I'd like to claim credit for the cittern shown above, it was made by the Italian luthier Valerio Gorla - I've got to turn the collection of bits in the first photo into a mandolin with similar looks to it!

For a long, long, time I've had a set of plans for making a flatback mandolin and kept thinking I ought to do something with them. After a number of inexpensive acquisitions on Ebay, I'm now finally in a position to do something about it Sorry for the rather poor photo, but what we've got there is: A back, sides, and headstock faceplate of Brazilian rosewood (bought from a retiring luthier, who kindly threw in a load of other of his offcuts so I have other bits for future projects), I've already glued up the faceplate with a couple of strips of marquetry inlay in between. A fingerboard of kingwood, that I've already stuck the template onto and cut to size, there's the largest offcut below it though this photo sadly doesn't do justice to the colour. A neck of Cuban mahogany (or so it was sold to me, as a cabinet maker's offcut) - it'll be a laminate neck as the piece wasn't wide enough, so there'll be a tapering centre strip of rosewood (type unknown) cut from a tabletop piece (to right of the mahogany piece). I've cut the piece roughly, though with my bandsaw out of action at the moment I did straight cuts with a tenon saw, cut guide curves using a gouge of about the right radius, then pulled out an old coping saw to finish the cut. Four binding pieces of Indian rosewood - I got a bundle of ~8mm square offcut lengths, and I've resawn two, though I had to do this by hand with the tenon saw due to the aforementioned bandsaw trouble. A bit of a pain, but do-able with a steady hand! Not shown on the photo is the soundboard, ribs and kerfing (spruce), or the tuners (Schaller M6N minis) but I've got those ready. I've also roughly cut two pieces for a body mould out of MDF. The intention is that this mandolin should be similar in looks to my beloved 1991 Valerio Gorla cittern - that's got a single piece mahogany neck, full size Schaller M6Ns and mahogany back and sides, but I'll be mirroring the headstock shape on this build. Photos of ten-string thing below, just realised I can see a freaky distorted reflection of myself in one of the tuners... Next steps - final trueing of the edges of the back pieces then glue up, that'll be the old-school string and wedge method. Glue up the neck laminates, which I'll do in two stages so I can get the taper on the insert right, and make up the heel block out of the mahogany offcut. I'll scarf the headstock, need to check the plans and remind myself what the angle should be, and add on the wings from the offcut in the centre of the neck block.

That's what I was feeling about the old girl, make sure the repair is holding up and she's staying in tune before doing anything else. The finish is battered in places so I'll either need to do a load of small patch repairs or start afresh, but that's a decision for the future - right now, I'm too busy enjoying the special release cask strength Kilchoman Machir Bay...

Quick update on this project, after glueing the cracked heel over the summer, finding an inexpensive set of Gotoh tuners on Ebay and making a new nut and bridge out of African blackwood, I've finally got round to putting strings on. I've been bringing them up to full tension slowly, and so far, so good. I did however notice when fitting the tuners that the mahogany of the neck seems to have faded in colour somewhat, and I'd suspected the same about the rosewood on the back and sides. I'm starting to think again about doing a full strip-down and refinish, but not right now!

That's looking damn good! It's also prodding me to get my arse into gear and finish off the major inlay job I've been doing on a Shadow S100 for far too many years now...

Not been a great deal of progress on it, I've got a yew bell on the chanter and a couple of the other bits are shaping up, but I'm thinking of scrapping the drones and redoing them, after sorting out a long-boring rig for the lathe involving movable additional bearings for the drillbits. I also need to find my carving gouges to rough out the chanter stock, which I've mislaid... I'll try and get a few new photos up shortly.

Far more organised than me, then - I have leaflets from the annual tasting event I've been going to for years with scribbles on, which get less readable the later in the day they were written! I've never really gone in for blind tastings, other than playing "guess what it is" with supermarket own-label single malts...

Can you remember what they were?

AFAIK Appalachian dulcimer fretboards aren't usually radiused, given they're played on the lap and often with a peg (rather like a bottleneck). Having said that, if you're more comfortable with it radiused, go for it!

Reminds me of the Jackson Dinky I sold recently - bought in bits, missing its pots but with the original pickups and Floyd Rose so I reckoned that even if I couldn't rebuild it to something playable I could get back what I'd paid by selling the parts. As it was, it did come back to life and better than it would originally have been - the humbuckers were tappable but hadn't been, so two push-pull pots were fitted for coil tap and series-parallel switching. I was pleased with the result, and so was the buyer

I recently sold a Jackson Dinky I'd rebuilt from bits and put new electronics into; in terms of time spent I made a loss but I bought it to do up for the practice. When listing it online I made clear what I'd done , which was remove and refit the fretboard then re-level and dress the frets, then put in push-pull pots for coil split and series-parallel. It's always worth mentioning you've done the Floyd setup too...

I think what you've done here is bring the viol out of the seventeenth century and into the twenty-first! Looking forward to the next sound clips...

I guess it's the old "you get what you pay for" - at the bottom end, you'll be looking at cheap zinc-alloy Chinese copies that may do the job but will be of dubious quality and adjustability. At the other end, you've got the likes of Gotoh, Schaller and Hipshot that'll give you finely machined brass parts but there's also an element of "paying for the name" when you buy new - keep an eye out for second hand ones on Ebay, perhaps?

That's nicer than the cab I put together to go with my Microterror - that was a Peavey 10W practice amp with dead electrics bought off ebay for peanuts and gutted. Cut a new front panel out of chipboard sprayed it black, mounted a 10" Celestion on it and then put a grill over the top, bought off ebay with the proceeds of selling the original speaker and electrics on ebay! I keep thinking about making a new cabinet, maybe out of reclaimed mahogany, for my Trace Elliot acoustic amp with hidden dovetail joints but then I remember how many other projects I've got on the go...

And there was me thinking it was intended as an alternative to a strap button!