mattharris75

If there's one thing I consistently do during a build it's underestimate the amount of time it takes to sand something.... I should just triple the estimate in my mind and that will end up being much closer to the real number.

Last night I leveled the top and back of the rim. Here was my setup: Three rows of adhesive backed 80 grit sandpaper stuck to my bench top. It was tedious but effective. I literally spent an hour and a half repeating the same routine over and over. Hold at the blocks, fifty circular strokes, hold at the waist, fifty circular strokes, turn it 180 degrees, hold at the lower bout, fifty circular strokes, hold at the blocks, fifty circular strokes, vacuum the dust, check for level. And on and on. First the back, and then the front (didn't start checking for level until the back was totally flat, no gaps around the perimeter of the rim). It took a little longer than anticipated, but it's done. The depth at the tail block is about thirty thousandths thinner than the depth at the head block. But it is a consistent rise , not a low spot, and both the top and back of the rim are flat. I think that will be within spec for me...

When I used brass tube dots on one of my builds I bought the tubing at a local hobby shop. Places like HobbyTown USA or Tower Hobbies likely have it.

Looking pretty clean to me! Can't wait to see this thing finished, I love the quirkiness of the design elements. It's going to be quite a beast when it's all said and done.

So, problem solving... When gluing the ribs to the blocks I had a couple of issues . The first was the rib bent around the scroll coming up about 1/8" short of the notch in the block. This wasn't a big deal, and I knew right after I'd bent it that I was slightly off. But due to the positioning of it I figured I could glue in a strip after the fact the fill the space and it would never be seen. No biggie. The second issue ended up being just on the other side of the block from the scroll where the rib is tightly curved and fits in the other notch on the head block. I hadn't anticipated that one. I had made a MDF wedge to fit in there (a poor material choice) to apply pressure on either side of those curves during glue up, but when I was pounding it in the MDF basically gave up the ghost and got stuck part way down. So I wasn't able to put pressure on the whole depth of the joint. The titebond caused some warping and it looked pretty bad. So, I ended up having cut out about a 5/16" section with a small chisel and clean the glue off with a riffler rasp and add in a new rib piece. That was working in some tight quarters. It turned out pretty well, all things considered. The joint doesn't particularly stand out, and I think when it's all said and done it won't be very noticeable. Also, I never mentioned it, but you'll notice in the picture that the rib piece that wraps around the head block is actually only a small piece. I decided that would be much easier than trying to bend the entire treble side rib from that notch all the way to the tail block. And since the mortise will cut away all of the material there it would have been a big pain for no benefit. So, short rib it was.

No doubt. I'm glad the little one just wants to come out and sit in my lap and do 'work'. I can already see how my seven year old is growing up so rapidly (feels like having a teenager some days), so I cherish the cute little things that the three year old does. Thanks Scott. An end graft is pretty common on acoustic guitars. Not so much on mandolin family instruments. On F styles the top rib ends behind the lower point and on A styles they do the tail joint first and make up the slack at the head, since the neck joint is cut there anyway. Since this is sort of a hybrid some acoustic guitar construction techniques needed to be 'borrowed'.

Heh, well I do hate dust and disorder. I think much more clearly when my work area is straight. So going into jobs things need to be clean. In the midst of working things definitely get dusty, but I do my best to keep up with it. And I have this little helper who is very fond of vacuuming. And rulers. I don't know why...

Scraped the ribs level with the blocks and kerfing and then put in the macassar ebony end graft. I've got to get my adhesive backed sandpaper from my father in laws shop so that I can level the top and bottom.

I 'kerfed' it...

Both sides bent and the head and tail blocks glued up. This weekend I should get the kerfed lining glued in and get the sides leveled to the blocks.

Definitely an improviser here as well. With regard to side bending, I don't have a lot of experience either, and it certainly varies by wood, but for some reason the mandola side I bent last night was much easier than my previous practice attempts. It seemed that getting the right combination of temperature and water for a given wood made all the difference. Geting the tight radius around the scroll took a little doing, but at some point the wood just sort of went slack, like it gave up resisting me, and it became surprisingly easy to bend,

Yeah, the worst of it is near the lower edge. I removed the clamp this morning and it appears that the titebond took care of the worst of it, so I'm not worried. But it's still an annoyance. I am also using a reverse kerfed lining meant for a guitar, which gives me a little more height (5/8" vs 3/8"), so yeah that aught to cover quite a bit of it.

Thanks Scott. Got the first side bent last night. I decided to start off with the most difficult part first, the scroll. I figure that if I was going to break any wood it would be right there. So, it went really well, and right at the end I decided the waist needed a bit more tweaking, so I went to bend it a bit more and sure enough, crack. It wasn't all the way through , and only on the bottom (and inside) half of the rib. But it certainly freaked me out when it happened. I glued the fibers back down with a little titebond, and that seemed to get most of it. I'll sand it out and see how it looks. I can add a small structural brace, or laminate a piece on top of it, if necessary. That would be common on a guitar, regardless of cracking, not so much on a mandolin/mandola.

One thing that I've found helps me on funky joints like this, where there is a big tendency for the joint to slide, is to use blue painters tape on it. A bit of tape in the right spot can really minimize the amount of clean up work you have to do.

This little head block was a bit of a pain. Thanks to the scroll and the fact that the bent sides will be inset into notches in the block there was a lot of fiddly work involved. Looks like it will do the trick though. It's a laminate of two layers of mahogany with a little walnut in between. Should be quite strong. Finish the tail block and a little more tweaking on the neck and I'll be ready to start bending the sides.

More work on the neck. Even though I don't have my acrylic templates yet I said screw it and sanded the headstock to final shape. Then started working on the headstock to neck transition. This is such a rewarding part of the build, it's quite therapeutic. I think I'm about 2/3 done with the whole neck shaping procedure at this point.

Nope. Just going to clamp from the edges.

I've carved wenge with an abrasive flap disk on an angle grinder. Made a tremendous mess, but worked well.

Spent a few hours working on the neck carve last night. Still needs some thinning out at the shoulders, the profile feels a bit 'clubby' as it is. But it's getting closer, and the heel is nearly there. I finished my body form. It's 1.5" thick MDF, made in two parts. It can be taken apart when using it as a form for bending each side, and then clamped together when gluing the head and tail blocks and installing the kerfed linings.

Yeah, the fingerrest really shines like glass in the light. Macassar takes such a nice polish. I'm a huge fan of Micro Mesh. I'm going to kind of play it by ear as far as matching the headstock with the fingerrest. Right now the plan is to hit it with a little garnet shellac before adding tru oil. If the color isn't right I can always mess with it from there. Scott, I very much attribute my current pace to my diet. Besides being a pretty free time of year for me I have so much energy in the evenings that after the kids are in bed I'd rather go out in the shop and work than veg in front of the TV. I should have my body form finished this evening, decided I could proceed on it without waiting on the template. Then I will just need to finish my headblock and tailblock and I can start bending some sides! I'm very much looking forward to that.

Scott, the fingerrest is also macassar, just from a different supplier. I originally only ordered the headplate and backstrap along with the redwood top from Oregon Wildwood. I forgot to order a third piece for the fingerrest, so when I went to just order that piece they wanted like 19 bucks shipping, so I said screw it and ordered it from LMI instead while ordering some other supplies. I asked them to send me a really stripey one, which they did. And I think it looks great. It's just not a perfect match to the headstock. I think it will be fine when the finish is on. The fingerrest is going to remain unfinished, it's been polished up through 12K grit with Micro Mesh. So, the headplate should darken up and be a pretty good color match. I think it will look fine even with the slightly more diffuse striping pattern.

A decent amount of work accomplished over the last few days. Neck trimmed to width (within 1/32"). Fretboard glued on. Neck rough carved. Fingerrest done. Here's a pic of the rough carved neck. I need to clean up the profile a bit and finish up the heel. I'll have to wait until I get my templates to cut the headstock before I can finish cleaning up things on the headstock end. But hey, at least it's starting to look like a neck now. And here is the top side. Testing out the fit of the fingerrest on the fretboard extension. Looking good. I'm going to mill about 2mm off of the top of the fretboard extension overhang to lower the fingerrest a bit.

Looks great. Tru Oil on walnut is always a good choice. What was your finishing procedure with the Tru Oil? I like the nice clean satin look you got from it.

Well, I'm glad my ramblings provide some value. Last night I worked on the fretboard extension. It's a 6.5mm thick piece of macassar ebony, which was laminated out of a headstock plate. It's literally four pieces of wood. The top piece is one section, but the bottom was pieced together from three offcuts. It'll work. I'm using it not only to support the fretboard, but as a place to attach my finger rest. I plan onrouting off a couple of mm from the top of the section that extends out from under the neck (to lower the finger rest a bit), and will also sand in a slight angle to have the finger rest angle down from the strings slightly. I also cleaned up the headstock to about 1/8" to 1/4" from the edge (although that's mostly not visible in this picture). I'm still waiting on my templates, and don't want to finish that until I have them in hand.