Mandolins in progress

[Pete Jenner]

That looks good enough to eat Tavy.

[GKWilson]

John. If this turns out like your mandolins or mandola this will be one nice instrument.
Can't wait to hear it.
Gary

[hank]

Would that be called a fanfret crochead? Needle nose fanfret? Very way cool and differentish in fact.

[oldwave maker]

The thing I miss most about the Wintergrass festival is the opportunity to rummage thru an anonymous white van in the parking lot for fantastic figured farwood from the godfather of quality quilt!

[lflngpicker]

My Morris A Oval with the K&K pickup is finally home. It sure was worth the wait. More pictures are available in Post a Picture section, but here is one:

[labraid]

Getting ready to add some support to a couple bowl interiors, with some freshly planed strips of Carpathian spruce.

[GKWilson]

It's great to see your work again Labraid. Always a pleasure.
And your photography is next to none.
A new photo always means new wallpaper for my computer.
Gary

[Pete Jenner]

Good to see you back Brian. How thick do those spruce strips have to be?

[labraid]

A pleasure, I'll try to post more often, cheers guys. I aim for .003"/.08mm in my lining strips. Not too thick, just flexible enough.

[JeffD]

Mando-beast getting ready for a test stringing - still some work to do yet though - not least make that pesky tailpiece...

Tavy, that is stunning. Beautiful. While modern and boldly new, its got a very ancient vibe. It is evocative of all those lute like instruments of the Renaissance.

In my humble untrained and bumping around blind opinion you should enter that instrument in a general aesthetic design competition. I have read articles about these competitions, where the judging is based on the look of the designs - everything from kitchen appliances, musical instruments, garden tools. Depends on the rules but what I have seen the objects have to be useful for their primary function to even qualify, and then its the aesthetics that are judged.

At the very least your completed creation is very very poster worthy.

[Tavy]

Thankyou Jeff!

First I need to finish the darn thing though....

[labraid]

Installed...

[GKWilson]

Amazing.

[Tavy]

Amazing.

Ain't that the truth!

[GarY Nava]

Hey Tavy,
You're still ahead of me!
Cheers Gary

[Pete Jenner]

Installed...

Lovely.

[Tavy]

Hey Tavy,
You're still ahead of me!

Well as it happens, I've taken the back off mine again - as well as refining the voice a bit - I've found that with 10 strings:

* The truss rod will just about get the neck straight when maxed out, though I'm hoping this will improve when the action is down a bit (currently sky high, need to adjust the neck angle as well). I always thought that both CF and a truss rod were total overkill... now I'm not so sure!
* There's some noticable forward neck rotation when stringing up, it's manageable, but I'm putting some more CF "neck thrust defenders" in anyway I suspect I didn't get the main CF rod near enough to the top of the neck, so there's some pivotting about their end points going on.

Just a warning as you haven't got to this stage yet... I knew there was going to be a whole load of string tension to manage, but until you string up you don't realise just what that amounts to!

[Kent Barnes]

Harlan # 7 was strung-up last night. I think it sounds great - nice and loud!

[Tavy]

Pickguard in progress - some scrap plus 99 pence worth of veneer:

[Marty Jacobson]

I'll see your birdseye and raise you a few, Tavy. :-)

Some Sunday afternoon finish sanding and dyeing.

[Michael Bridges]

Nice, Marty! Knew when I saw that birdseye "in the raw", that it was gonna look great! It does. Great work, as always.

[David Houchens]

New batch. A 3 point mandola, An F and an A.

[Charles E.]

Wow, looking forward to seeing the three point mandola. Oval hole or F?

[David Houchens]

I decided to go with an F on this one. I remember seeing a Hutto F45 ( I think thats what he called it ) and liked the idea. This one won't have the original looking 3 point scroll. More standard H5 scroll. This has been on my back burner for a long time. Kinda excited to finally get it going.

[David Houchens]

Oldwave, I saw that octave in the classifieds. Inspired me to start drawing one up to build later this year. What strings did you use? This one will have a 21" scale I think. I see yours is 21 1/2".