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I finished this a couple days ago, and have been too busy enjoying the fruits of my labor that I just got around to taking pictures today.

Top-Sitka Spruce
Back/Sides - Big Leaf Maple
Binding - Black Walnut (from my old dresser)

This was my first solo build. Just a set of plans and the tools I've slowly been aquiring. It was almost 3 years in the making. Glad to be finished so I can build another

The finish is French Polished Shellac

Oops...Pictures

That's a cool looking project -- I like the side profile. I haven't tried the bent top design yet. What are your impressions of the design?

It looks like the string spacing might be wider than normal? How about a shot of the rosette? And how does it sound?

Kent

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Beautifull work . I like building mandos as well . look forward to sseeing another project.

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Kent,

I appreciate the comments, questions and concerns. I am not a mandolin player nor have I any background in building them but I am very enthused to build another and make some improvements. I took this one on because I thought it would be a somewhat easy first completely solo build.

I like the design as it is almost totally flat besides the bend, and I have only built guitars in the past. It has 3 braces running laterally. One above the soundhole and two behind the sound hole with the furthest back one being just short of the bend and nothing after the bend. I got brave and tried to increase sound by scalloping the middle brace in the middle. I read an article somewhere a while back that most of the bent top mandolins were over braced and there was a luthier (wish I could remember who and where I saw it) who was altering braces on them. It seemed to me that two relatively wide and tall braces less than an inch apart was over kill, so I took meet off the one that seemed like it would have the least tension on it to free up the top.

Making the bend wasn't all that tricky, just required a careful cut with a dovetail saw and support with an old bed sheet and some hide glue. It seems pretty sound even though there's only about a 1.25 mm of wood. There is a dip running the length of it behind the bend, but I don't have a climate contolled shop and I live in pretty drastic changes of humidity so I'm guessing that's accounting for it. It doesn't really matter all that much since there's no tension there anyway. I thought the binding bend would be more difficult than it was, but the walnut bent pretty easily on sharp part of a bending iron. I'm happy with the way it turned out.

There were no serious bends, so I the highly figured maple wasn't a problem on the sides. The action is very comfortably low without any buzzes (whew). I think I may have rushed the saddle spaces in a hurry to see what it was going to sound like. My 2 outer most strings are 42mm apart and that was the eyeball part. I tried to maintain the 2 mm from the edge of the fingerboard all the way down the neck. My 2 non wound courses are 2.5 appart. My 2 Gs are 4.5mm apart (my spec sheet says they should be 3) and my Ds are (2.5 mm) spec sheets says 3. Do you have more accurate specs or suggestions? I can give you a better picture of the neck and saddle with the rosette pictures if you'd like. My neck centerline could possibly off? It does appear that it is leaning a little now to the bass side now that I look closer.

I would really like to keep making these, because it seems there have been little attempts at them besides the old Martin's. It would be fun to do some more experimenting with the bracing. I think the world is open for experimenting with different woods too. I don't have the equiptment to resaw billets for guitars but the top and back are merely 5 inches wide which a 14" bandsaw can easily handle. I have some old growth Redwood siding that will just squeeze a top out and I bought a small billet of myrtle, so I think that's going to be number two.

As for the sound....I'm a guitar player and only know a little bit on the mandolin, but it is very responsive. Very open and balanced. I have to palm mute the G string most of time when I'm not playing it because it sympathetically rings when I'm playing other notes and chords. Maybe that's a good thing, but it's kind of annoying. Maybe that's common I don't know. I would love to hear a real mandolin player play and tell me what he or she thinks because I am a little clueless as to how it would compare to others. All that I have to compare it to now is an all mahogany arched topped, arched back, oval hole, made by an unknown maker. It's not really comparing apples to apples there.


I will try and take a couple more pics and maybe get some sound sample too within the next day or so.

Comments and criticisms are always welcome. It's my first mando so I'd like to learn as much as I can from it.

Mitch great jobs. I love it. I'm play mandolin and have plans in the future to build 1 or maybe 15 or so mandolins. As for the string spacing i think it looks right. These canted tops and many flat tops have wider fingerboards and spacing compared to F tops. Did you build from specific plan?...Mike

Thanks Mike! The plan came from a seller on ebay, but it was drawn by Scott Antes. They are pretty good plans, but if you use them, be ready to make your own side templates. That was about my only complaint with the plans.

I like it!



Uh-oh…

If you have no way of controlling the climate in your whole shop, look into building a “dry room" or cabinet. That, or figure out what building steps can be taken under what climatic conditions, and build accordingly, which is how woodworking has been done for ages. Some things can safely be done when it is too dry / humid, other things cannot; typically gluing up stuff in ways that restricts how it can move with humidity. If you don't, sooner or later your instruments will most likely suffer worse consequences than what you describe with this one. It is that important...

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Thanks! I believe this is also one of the plans i have from scott. I have a few different mando plans that i also bought from ebay. Just nice to see a finished result from one of these plans...Mike