belbein
Registered User

Today I gave up an almost eight-year long project. I am disappointed to decide that I should not complete it. But though it will remain inned. Incomplete but not a failure.

Eight years ago I wondered: what would a small, guitar-body octave mandolin be like? I love my full-size octave mandolin, and I’ve always loved the guitar body shape. So I set out to determine whether I could build a small size guitar body octave mandolin. The least expensive way to do it was to buy a tenor

Read More

"Hey, will you play something for us?" That's often what people say when they walk into my house and see the mandolins and banjos hanging on the wall, the guitars leaning up against a bookshelf, the shelves of music ...

My answer is always the same: a resounding "NO."

With a follow up: "I'll play if you play, too." And I point out that I have stringed instruments, recorders, kazoos, drums, and even soup pots and wooden spoons. They

Read More

There's a continuum that runs from buying a mandolin someone else built, through kits, and over to cutting down a tree. And kits are along the near-buying-ready-made end of the spectrum. All that's true.

And it's certainly true that people who cut down the trees and mill the lumber and then cut and plane the lumber and then get out their fingerplanes to further plane down the wood etc ... you guys are pretty damn impressive woodworkers.

But it's also true that

Read More