Lockdown Mandolin...

Looks like my lockdown project is going to be a Mandolin from scratch. I found a old dinghy centreboard in the garage roof which turns out to be 22mm thick sapele, probably 40 years old, which will provide the neck and a sort of centreblock. There's just one problem, I'm 40ish miles from my workshop and have few tools. I've spent a large percentage of the last week converting this centreboard which has few really flat surfaces, into suitable planks mainly by hand sanding. So so far about a week to do what would have taken me a morning if I had access to my father's thicknesser...

Good thing you're not in a hurry I guess...

Are you going solid or acoustic? I don't think I've ever come across a solid mandolin so that appeals to my slightly askew wish list :)
I have, in one of my dark workshop corners, a slightly broken Mandola, which I have always thought of as a baritone Mandolin. It deserves repairing as it is a nice sounding instrument (the dog did it, honest Dad!) An electric solid is one I may well tackle at some time

Sounds very interesting. Looking forward to seeing how it goes...

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Originally Posted by impala59

Are you going solid or acoustic?

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Semi. I want an instrument I can play without abuse from downstairs, so not very loud. I think its going to have a sort of half height centre block so there is a reasonable soundboard, but I have't got to worry much about bracing and dovetail neck joints and other things beyond my confidence level. Carbon fibre will have a role to play.

Fender have made a solid mandolin, but bizarrely with only 4 strings which I should have thought kinda misses the point.

Fender have made a solid mandolin, but bizarrely with only 4 strings which I should have thought kinda misses the point.[/QUOTE]

Yes I googled and also found some 8 string Chinese “mandocasters” rather like a child size telecaster. Just goes to show everything is out there, I will follow your build with interest

Here's a 'progress' image. What you are looking at is the centreblock and neck, plus the headstock. The centreblock is going to be roughly half height, so hopefully the soundboard will contribute something.
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The body is at the bottom of the picture - sorry about the orientation. Its a sapele/maple/sapele sandwich. I'm planning to make the projecting end of the maple into a tenon to locate the headstock well. No truss rod, but there'll be carbon fibre reinforcement right over the headstock splice and down to the centreblock, so its kinda a through neck setup.

Components are beginning to appear...

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Well, it's vaguely beginning to take shape... Piece of trivia. The wooden French curve visible belonged to my grandfather when he was a premium apprentice with the Metropolitan Railway before WW1, and were used laying out the instrument. I won't say designed...

It's coming along nicely. Nice to see some mandolin love; they're great instruments

I dream of having a mandola one day. I just feel the range would better suit any music I would use it for.

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Slow progress... The carbon reinforcement for the neck and centreblock done. While I think potentially laminated in place carbon is a better solution than prefabricated rods, I can't recommend it. Getting decent consolidation of the layup was far harder than I hoped, and I have a good bit of experience with the material.

The black stripe is carbon, it runs down the neck and then is spread out across the centre block, so the strands of carbon run from the headstock right through to the tail block.

I've kinda fallen in love with wood rasps. Its never been a tool in my armoury, I've always used things with blades, but as the wood rasp seems to be the tool of choice for neck shaping I bought those couple of cheap Chinese ones . No doubt they'll get blunt before too long, especially when I get onto the rosewood finger board, but I can well understand why people are willing to pay 70quid plus for top quality ones.

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Progressing slowly... The neck is provisionally shaped, the back of the body is glued on now, and I have been agonising over details for the front. I also have to decide on electrics soon. Its a tiny body, not much room to install later, but I could easily spend 5 times the total expenditure so far on pickups. The tuners hurt enough! I'm also looking at getting a pro to cut the fret slots, which will also hurt.

Looks great so far. Definitely way beyond my ability!

I know what you mean about cost blow outs though. I built a pedal once and doubled my parts cost just because I wanted fancy knobs.

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Originally Posted by jugglindan

ust because I wanted fancy knobs.

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Don't we all? ;)

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

Don't we all? ;)

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Yes, yes we do.

Speaking of knobs, I thought it would be cool to have a thumb wheel type volume control in the side of the instrument, but then I investigated the practicalities and changed my mind!

Current state of affairs. The body is glued together. I'm waiting for the fretboard to come back - I outsourced the job of cutting the slots having low confidence in both my skills and my available tools.

The bridge shown is a first pass, its (I hope) about 5mm too high. Doing the intonation will be hard work with nothing adjustable other than by moving the bridge back and forward and sanding it lower.

The tailpiece is also an experiment, Mandolin tailpieces mostly come in three varieties, thin pressed steel plate ugly and kitsch, but cheap, pressed steel plate, complicated, still rather kitsch and worryingly expensive or finally sophisticated cast design, viciously expensive and rather large lumps.

What I'm thinking about are four stainless steel pins (dinghy rigging pins actually) which will go through this little rosewood block and into the tail piece below. It will need some kind of surround though to protect hand from string ends, but I'm still working on that.

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I wish I had some of you guys skills in finishing though, it would be nice to have some kind of sunburst, but I'm not at all confident. Also most spruce top finishes I've seen have tended to veer towards the antique violin look, which I'm less taken by.

Little roadblock on the journey. I gave a quick wipe with white spirit, and the sapele neck and meranti (at a guess) back and sides look truly horrible together. Like it or not it looks as if I'm going to have to learn to do wood staining - and brush up on my 40 years unused colour matching skills...

Well, that was a roller coaster...
I was talking about a need to dye the sides. I decided I'd also try a sort of burst with the dyes I had. Result, on spruce, highly unsatisfactory and blotchy.
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I now hear that it's considered good practice to put a coat of shellac down on spruce before dye...

And so my first idea was to try what putting a fake binding border would look like, so out with the dry wipe marker.
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Really not much better.

At this stage I was about to order a piece of wood for a new top. However I thought I'd try and remedy before pressing 'the button' so out with my favourite boat building tool the random orbital sander.
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So with a lot of scraping round the neck and fine paper I got to here. The top is now on the thin side, but I don't think [hope?] riskily so. Wasn't brave enough to try another dye job - nor enough wood to get one wrong...

I'm still impressed with the build.
I'm not a mando guy, but I appreciate any effort made into making an acoustic instrument.
Not sure I'm up to the task.

Now, just think how much easier the second one will be after what you've learnt! :p

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Originally Posted by McCreed

Not sure I'm up to the task.

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You'd be surprised. Especially as so far I've made centre block instruments with 2mm plywood sides, which means that there are no issues with dealing with string tension and not much problem bending the sides. A true acoustic is more of a challenge.

Well if you ever decide to do a relic you now know that the stain-on-spruce is a perfect starting point! I actually rather like the look but I'm guessing junk-shop-chic isn't what you were aiming for. :)

Headstock logo... I have some transfers for my JC logo (thanks Simon) but black, even with bordered in yellow doesn't work on the sapele headstock. I also have some test prints on white background. Experience suggests that attempting to cut a narrow white border from the transfer is doomed to fail with my level of dexterity, but I do have a fabric cutter that does circles. A whole circle isn't going to look right with my very minimally scrolled headstoc, but I thought a half circle worth a try. What does the panel think?

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Overall the project has been delayed by waiting for tru oil to really cure well and by fretting. I was trying to avoid spending too much money on tools, but lockdown combined with domestic circumstances meant I didn't feel I could take up Simon's offer of using his kit in his garden, so I've given up and ordered a fret hammer. Levelling/crowning tools, well we'll see...

[Later] Better with the tuners in place I think...

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Been a bit of a hitch. Due to lack of tools/facilities/confidence/inclination I decided to outsource getting the slots cut on the fingerboard to a local luthier. So I got it back, trimmed it to size etc but didn't really look at it until I came to do the frets.
And I looked, and thought, that looks odd. Well, anyone can have a bad day, and he certainly had one when he cut my board, because it was awful! So I'm currently waiting for him to send me a replacement.
In the meantime here's a couple of photos out in the sun. It needs all the dust specs polished off etc and burnishing, which will have to wait for the tru oil to really cure, but I'm not unhappy.

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You may notice the transfer from the previous is missing. Decided I didn't like it. I'll see what it looks like with strings on before making too many decisions.

It's a very cool build. I suspect it will look best with no logo. Sort of in keeping with traditional styling.

Nice job Jim. Looking really good.

+1 on no logo, just looks classier. Am getting inspired to repair my Mandola which was attacked by a mentally challenged greyhound a few years back. It’s been sitting around, unloved since

Thanks everyone.
FWIW
The headstock is Sapele.
The neck and body centre block are Sapele/Maple/Sapele sandwich
The back and sides are 2mm Okoume plywood, dyed with a mixture of "walnut" and "red mahogany" stain to approximate the Sapele. The back has a rather interesting figure which is a sort of negative bookmatch in the outer strips of veneer. That was on the ply as it shipped, and I just lined up the join in the veneer with the centreline.
There's a laminated in place unidirectional carbon reinforcement running from the tailblock right into the headstock
The soundboard is European Spruce
The fretboard is TBC!

Well, I have my replacement fretboard and have banged in some frets. At the moment its initial setup time with a whole two strings. The bridge and nut are purely temporary, cut out of chopping board plastic to let me get a feel of dimensions. The hope is that I can work out correct intonation for each string with the plastic bridge and then build a maple bridge with the same dimensions.
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I didn't like the look of cheap tailpieces, or the price of the good ones, especially those nice cast ones, so I am experimenting with this. Two strings per pin, which I may come to regret, we shall see. The strings on there at the moment were made from some ultra light mandolin/banjo strings, which were long enough that I got just enough for very top and very bottom out of the pieces cut off. That's why the very crudely wound loops. The pins are 4.6mm stainless steel sailboat rigging pins with the ends filed off and waisted, and turned down to 4.5mm. The waisting of the pins was required by the wound strings, which seem to have smaller loops than plain ones. As can be seen tuning down stainless steel pins with a power drill and a file is not, in my hands, a precision exercise. The pins are long enough to go down into the tail block, so it should be plenty strong enough. The actual piece is rosewood, as is the fingerboard.

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The only problem with the single pin approach is if the string you break is the bottom one... ;)
Just slows the process down.

If you're in a hurry just cut the bottom one off as short as you can and put the new one on top! No doubt I shall find out, but I anticipate being able to cut the loop and pull the remains out.

That is a very creative tailpiece solution. I like the renaissance look of that and the project generally.

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Approaching completion. No electrics yet. Bridge needs finishing. Nut needs to have the low string and the buzzing string dealt with (obviously not my best skill, but maybe those megabucks nut files would help). A fret job is probably required too. It's sort of playable, and has turned out louder than I really wanted. The acoustic tone is not displeasing to my highly biased ears.

Well it certainly looks the part! Nice work Jim.

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I'm calling it complete. It needs a strap button, but that's hardly a big deal. Visibly it's acquired a pickup. Invisibly it's acquired a little wedge under the bridge brace which locks it firmly in position and deals with the various tuning issues. Seems the top isn't quite strong enough in its thinned down situation. This doesn't do the acoustic sound any favours, and also dramatically reduces the volume. This latter is a big plus since I would like to be allowed to play it when there are other people in the house.

It's the first instrument I've tried to build - and design - from scratch, and while there are any number of things that could be done better I'm not displeased.

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...and while there are any number of things that could be done better I'm not displeased.

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Sounds like most of my builds! Good job Jim.

The thing about doing these things is, we can always (or almost always) revisit a build to fix things we may find we're not satisfied with after playing it for awhile :)

Definitely something you can point to and say "I made that" and be pleased with.

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