F5 #2 finished

[buddyellis]

Finally finished and strung up. Sounds better than I could hope for. This is my 5th build, and have the wood for my first scratch build ready to go.

[buddyellis]

back

[buddyellis]

Headstock

[Bill Snyder]

Looks like you are getting the hang of it. I like the color.

[JEStanek]

Looks good. I like the burl on the headstock.

Jamie

[Gibson A5]

Looks Great, you should be happy. Good luck on your scratch built one, but I doubt you'll need much luck, I'm sure you'll do great.
Bill P.

[Bernie Daniel]

That is a beautiful mandolin. #Those colors are very rich and inviting. #Think you will inlay the headstock? #I LOVE that pickguard and truss rod cover!

[buddyellis]

I'm chicken on inlay, although on my next one I will probably at the very least contract out a logo. I think I'm going with 'Blackrock' maybe with a mountain in the logo somehow out of black pearl, with green abalone 'red spruce' trees on the peak. I live in the 'shadow' of a peak called Blackrock Mountain in the Smokies. I've got a concept, but I need to work it out.

This one is already sold, though. And thats another issue, my first sale, and the 'oh ####, what if this thing melts into a flittering pile of goo three days after I deliver' stuff I'm sure everyone gets on their first sale. The guy saw my last kit F5 and asked me to build him one about 5 months ago, so here we are, with a real excuse to tell the wife so I can keep up this madness http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Thanks for the comments, guys.

[violin2233]

Very nice and way to go on making it your own! You do not need inlays anyway.. You could always get a shop to do that later anyway. Good color too!

[Bernie Daniel]

Question -- did you create that recurve and if so what did you use to guide your efforts? #Also I assume that you did a lot of tuning on the both plates and the tone bars - again are you using your own set of specs or do you recommed some pre-existing set?
Thanks.

[buddyellis]

Plates are graduated to more or less be 'near' loar specs, although not exactly. Generally at the edges they are an amalgamation of the Loar graduations you can find on the net, but the middle is slightly thicker (.165-.170).

At this point I'm doing a bit of flexing of the plates trying to learn how the wood feels, and I ignored any 'tuning' to specific notes on this one, although it is 'tuned' if you will, to a slightly higher (about 1 1/2 steps or so) pitch as far as the whole box in comparison to my #1. I'm also shooting for a good 'ring' when tapped with the top attached to the sides. This one has slightly less bottom end, but ALOT more chop/cut, and it seems a bit sweeter in the high end in comparison to my f5 #1.

The recurve was freehand a finger plane, and finally with a dewalt random orbital sander and 220 grit paper (spruce cuts fast) on the top, and starting with 120 on the back, up to 220 for the final thicknessing. One problem with these kits is the binding channel on the top is already cut, so you can't cut the edges down as much as you might want, but I like the abrupt recurve anyway, so. All of this was guided with my homemade caliper to get the edges somewhere around .105, within about .005 with the middle being around .165 I think.

Tone bars are carved very similar to some photos I have around here of a Dude Build (http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/uploads/post-15-42725-Evan2.jpg). They are slightly concave in between the tone bars, something I've noticed Dude doing, and a gentle curve (nearly flat) the length of the top, and thinned near the middle (see the photo, thats pretty much what I copied as far as shape), 'tuned' not to a specific note but for a 'good ring' when tapped over the areas where the bridge feet would go.

For plate thickness I think the loar specs are a starting point, although you probably want to go a little heavier depending on your spruce, as red spruce the loars were made of has a slightly higher stiffness than most other spruces.

Finish is 2 thin coats of oil violin varnish, cured for two weeks, scuffed with a grey 'scotch bright' pad, over which I brushed (get a good brush, it really does help) a couple of circa 1lb coats of bullseye amber shellac to which I've added a bit of benzoin and a tad (maybe 3-6 drops or so per cup of finish) of trans tint honey amber #6001. At that point everything was allowed to sit up a couple weeks to harden a bit, binding scraped out and then the whole thing was French Polished with Blonde bullseye shellac (to avoid staining the binding and requiring alot of rescraping). The neck is just oil finished -- I don't like finished necks, with the FP 'blended' near the ends of the neck.

One lesson learned, do your bridge setup, etc, before you do your final FP surfacing. You might have to slightly refit the bridge afterward, but getting it real close helps avoid having to re-spirit out the top, something I had to do on this one because I scuffed it up a bit on setup.

[dmamlep]

What kind of wood for the top

[buddyellis]

Some sort of chinese spruce (ken?) This is an IV f5 kit.