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Well, I've had a Mandobird for about a year, but got side-tracked from learning to play - using my extremely limited free time to built my own a-style from a kit. It's finally done, and I'm now...

Thanks for the feedback, folks!
Ken - I'd be more than happy to send a pic for your collection. You were great about swapping me a new back for the one that was just a smidge too narrow.
And Jamie...

After a year of squeezing in a moment here or there to work on it, my first mando is finally done. (Well, except I need to put on the truss rod cover I made for it.) A thousand thanks to everyone...

Thanks for the info. Although I should clarify - it's not that I've sanded down through the finish - it's that I just started to sand very lightly and it immediately looked scratched up on the...

I'm using TruOil on my first build (from an IV A kit), and after about 4 coats started sanding with 600 grit paper. I stopped immediately, thinking 'omigod, ugly white patches - I've ruined it!'. Or...

My brother, David King, makes very un-Hawaiian uke music, too, as the Duke of Uke:
Duke of Uke

He wonders: what is it with guys who put together a band with 2 guitars, a bass and a drummer, and...

Well, ya, it's blob-like to avoid the acute angles and 'thin bits' I thought might lead to splitting. The Ulysses butterfly is my model (like below, except in its natural resting shape rather than...

Oh man, the spinning hub rosette concept has me chuckling! Make it in metal and you might get inner city teenage boys to take up mandolin... or not.
The Music Makers site has other really neat...

Oh wait - Jamie said more toward the bridge, not the neck. Now I get it! My concern was mostly with it splitting under stress over time, but also when I cut it. But maybe with it a little more toward...

Ya, I am favoring the "up" design (funny how the eye doesn't read it easily as a butterfly when it's upside down), and I like the idea of making it a little bigger and closer to the neck, but then I...

I am veeeeerrrry slowly working on an IV kit w/ uncut soundhole (in 10 minute increments every few days...). I'd like to go with this butterfly design for the soundhole - it's my 8y.o. daughter's...

fiddlinfool - I'm also a novice thinking of starting with a Stew-mac or (more likely) the IV kit you can build as an oval hole. So I just looked around for a book that might be more appropriate than...