mattharris75

OK, OK, I really like it a lot. Yes, it's a flat board. My main mandolin is a Weber Yellowstone with a radiused fretboard, and I like it, but before it I had a Weber Gallatin with a flat fretboard, and I just loved the playability of it. I found I was a faster and more accurate player, on a mandolin at least, with a flat board. My 1918 Gibson F4 is flat boarded as well. These days most, not all, high end mandolins come with radiused boards unless otherwise requested, but in a historical context there are a lot more flat boards out there than radiused ones. Well, 'mandolin fretwire' is sort of a hard thing to nail down any more. Fifty or a hundred years ago mandolins came with itsy bitsy frets, and then 'banjo fretwire' became en vogue. And now smaller guitar fretwire is the most common thing. This is .080 width by .043 crown height Evo wire, which is a really popular size these days. I think the same or very close to the same that manufacturers like Collings and Weber use. I think Gibson still uses narrower wire, as well as a flat board on most of their models. The F5 mandolin world, and Gibson in particular, is steeped in the Bill Monroe tradition and is slow to change...

Lots of great tips in there. Thanks. As far as the head mounted lamps go, I wear one of those literally any time I'm in the shop in the evening (which is most of my shop time, after the kids are in bed). I've got one incandescent light overhead and a four foot fluorescent fixture over the work bench (I need to mount another over the work area, just haven't gotten around to it), and when there's no natural light coming in the head lamp is a life saver.

Evo gold fretwire and gold pearl side dots installed. I think I like it.

Looking good. And that Axminster bandsaw has some striking resemblances to my 12" Craftsman bandsaw... I think the Craftsman was actually build by Rikon, and yours seems to share some components, so maybe it was as well.

Well, I didn't quite finish fretting last night. Five more to go. The battery on my bluetooth speaker died, and I just couldn't continue with no tunes. So, I'll wrap that up tonight. But since I love documenting things, here is a pic of my ghetto setup to drill the side dot holes the other day. A block clamped to the drill press table, and a large piece of wood all nicely jointed to slide against it, with the fretboard taped in a level position with double sided tape. Piece of cake, slice of pie.

Yep, three for me as well.

Very cool. And I love how you're testing your ideas. Can't wait to see how this one turns out.

Thanks guys. I wouldn't go so far as to say I like it better, but I do like it. And it was certainly easier to execute. I managed to get the gold pearl side dots installed last night and started the fretting process. Filing the tang flush to the fret so you don't dent your binding is rather tedious work, and I was too tired to finish. Spent several hours in the swimming pool with the kids yesterday and it wore me out. I'm definitely getting old... Maybe tonight I'll get it done. The gold Evo fret wire does look pretty great with the bloodwood and black/cream binding look though, so I was happy to see that.

Changes were made... After trying to clean up and recover the end of the fretboard it was pretty clear that the side binding wasn't going to survive in a manner that would be usable for the existing shape of the fretboard end. After hours of futzing with it I decided to take a different tack. I came up with an alternate fretboard end shape, ripped off all the bass side binding, reshaped the fretboard end, made a new caul, heated and pre-bent the binding, etc. I was able to use one piece of binding for both the fretboard end and bass side. The glue up became a bit more complicated, but I think it worked out OK. Here's a pic after getting everything scraped clean and sanded up through 12000 grit micro mesh. You can see the original shape of the fretboard penciled in on the fretboard extension. Since this pic I've marked out the board for the side dots. Hopefully this evening after Easter festivities with the fam I'll have time to drill and install the side dots and possibly get the board fretted...

Whoa, cool. You could almost use a radius dish, like on an acoustic guitar, to rough that out...

Excellent, thanks for the tip! Trash bag material should be thin enough to tuck in there with the curves and not get in the way, I'll give that a go.

Had my first, 'Well, crap.' moment.I attached the last piece of binding to the end of the fretboard last night. Took it out of the clamping rig this morning. Huh, the clamping caul is a little bit stuck. I had not expected that. After all I'd only used a small amount of acetone. It's not like there was a bunch of glue squeeze out. So I gave it a little tug and, pop, off came both layers of binding, still attached to the caul. Well, crap. So, looks like I get to clean it up and do it again. And I'll have to make a new caul, since my current one is now bound. Maybe a little wax on the caul this time...

That may not have been the look you were going for, but it should be. It looks awesome. Just kidding. Sort of. It does look really cool though. Playing with finish options is a really enjoyable part of the process, in my opinion, as you end up seeing a lot of results that you didn't expect, and sometimes it can change your perspective on what you want the instrument to look like.

Got a couple of small things done last night: Scraped the fretboard end now that the binding has had a few days to dry. It looks quite good. I'll hopefully get my chisels setup tonight and get the final piece of binding on there. Rough cut the neck taper. Thinned and cut down the nut blank from a massive guitar blank. It's unbleached bone, and boy does it have a distinct aroma when you sand it. And finally, I started work on the fretboard extension. It's got a nice tight fit around the neck tenon. The plan is to use it as an attachment point for the pickguard (or finger rest as mandolin folks call it). Normally they would be attached with pins in the side of the fretboard, but I think I'm going to extend the fretboard extension past the treble side of the neck and sand a slight slope into it, then glue the finger rest directly onto that. Should be at least as secure as the other method, perhaps a bit more permanent though... I guess my biggest concern at this point is the roughness of the black bindings. The areas where my acetone covered fingers touched them while laminating them have distorted a bit. I've scraped them down a little, but the black is only .020 and I don't want to scrape through or end up with an uneven look from the top. I'm rethinking the body binding now. Maybe I should go with .040 black on the outside, just to be safe.

I have full confidence that this thing is going to be awesome.

Absolutely do this. Like Prostheta said, it's much easier to mess this up than you think. And you can end up with a too thin fretboard recovering from the mistake. Don't ask me how I know...

The neck tenon has been routed. The fretboard and binding have been scraped, except the very end where I need to finish the binding, and the fret slots have been de-gunked. I also made another clamping caul to glue the final black piece of binding on the end of the fretboard. I really need to get my chisels sharpened before I cut the binding ends though, so I'm holding off until I get that done.

Thanks, I'm quite happy with how it's looking so far. We'll see how it looks once it's all said and done, it's always a little tough to tell when everything is rough. As far as the jig, I tend to think of myself as a minimalist when it comes to jigs. Before I make a jig I always think, 'do I really need this jig?'. Most processes I think I can jury rig something that works well enough. If I was producing a bunch of instruments my attitude would be different, but when everything is a one off I prefer this approach. Of course there are times, like this one, where there's really no better choice. Or there is a better choice and I just don't see it.

Lmii.com and stewmac.com both have body blanks available. And there are many other smaller specialty sites out there that you can find with a little 'google fu'. But 'ready to cut' body blanks won't be cheap. You can save a lot of cash if you can find a lumber yard nearby and cut/plain/join the pieces yourself.

So this was a fun one. The fretboard end binding. I decided not to do traditional miters, because the shape of the end of the fretboard made the angles a little wonky. So, I'm insetting the first layer of binding, then will clip off the ends of the sides and put the black binding over the full width. The angled ends of the binding piece aren't 100% square with the side binding, but I've made some 'binding mud', binding melted in acetone, to fill the gaps. The clamping caul was kind of cool. It really only took a few minutes to make, and I couldn't think of any other effective way to apply pressure to the curve. I think once everything scraped down and filled this should come out looking pretty good:

Hey, I decided to bind the neck on my first build after I'd already radiused the fretboard. Ingenious ways to recover from mistakes, either mental or physical, is one of the most important things one learns when building instruments. No worries, it'll end up fine.

The tuners are Stew Mac Golden Age tuners. I had read good things about them, and they seem to be good quality. We'll see how the work once everything is together. The tailpiece is made by Allen, but it's the Monteleone design. It was way too expensive, but it's supposed to be the best of the best and it looks great too. I ordered it from LMI.

Naptha is just one way to clean the wood. Tack cloths, a good shopvac, etc, are all viable. Nothing to worry about. I've never had an issue with skin oils either.

Yeah, it was one of those things where I knew I could make a jig to do it, and didn't particularly want to spend the money, but for the sake of time and efficiency I just bit the bullet and bought the tool. I meant to post this the other day, a picture of the hardware I'm using. I wanted to go with a sort of antique look for the project, so rather than buying really glossy plated hardware I went in a different direction. The tuners are relic brass and the tailpiece is unplated bronze. I'm a big fan of the way they look: Oh, and I'm also using Evo gold fretwire, which I think will look really great with everything else.

These are absolutely crazy cool. A guitar top made with this process seems like the kind of thing that could really help differentiate your work even further from other boutique builders.