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No structural reasons at all. I'm just (not completely cured) perfectionist. :-)

Fscotte, I personally think you should consider building a fiddle instead of a violin :grin:

Not all mandolins. Bowl-back mandolins tended to favor rosewood for the bowls; others were mahogany, and some had alternating ribs of either maple and rosewood, or maple and mahogany. Martin made...

My degrees are in physical chemistry, and some of the work was theoretical chemistry. As such, much of my course work overlapped w/ that of physicists, including most of the math courses and some of...

Seems to me that if the F5 style is made by most builders, compay's included like Collings, Weber etc. etc. they make it like the Loar F5. If another design was copied all these years by so many then...

Working on a special FX in this build set --

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Steve

I'm quite proud of my mandolin mute. It has taken many years and countless adult beverages to hone into the fine mass it is today. I do also use a tone gard for when a more audible sound is needed...

The A-40 and Kalamazoo arched top mandolins used a back brace because (I was always told) it was a pressed back. I think we've had two of these over the years here. They didn't make a lot of them. I...

Straight lacquer. No sealer, no nothing. Popped enough for you?
...

You can also emphasize that figure using dye. Like this.

Lacquer over oil - done since lacquer was invented, nothing unusual here. Oil-based stains are used under lacquer all the time, and lacquer over Danish Oil need not be problematic. Make sure that the...

While Lloyd Loar was tap tuning his mandolins in 1923, James Reynold Carlisle of Kentucky was doing the same with his violins. Some consider him one of the best American violin makers ever. This is a...

This is so typical of this kind of discussion on the MC, and elsewhere on the net. It has devolved into semantics and hurt feelings because what one intended to say was not understood. And this is...

I am having a moment of temporary insanity and would love for someone to talk me out of it. I blame it on the fact that my wife is out of town. At any rate all of the instruments that I built so far...

Forstner bits are not twist drills. Running them at very high speeds will overheat them and ruin them, especially in hard wood. A 1/4" bit should run at around 700 rpm.

Yeah, I guess you could have loaded up all the mandolins and taken them to the nearest recording studio that uses Telefunken (or some such) microphones.
And you coulda hired Steffey to do the...

I don't know where the proper board is to put this so I'll post it here. Some of my co-workers are always humming this melody to Game of Thrones so I decided to learn it. Played on bouzouki and...

A common obstacle to good staining results is poor surface preparation. Sanding must be thorough and complete or dyes will not give us even, predictable, nice looking results. If you are having...

When we set the action at a conventional slotted nut we generally try to set it such that when the string is pressed between frets 2 and 3, it clears the first fret by a very slight amount - a couple...

For what it's worth the "Made in China = Junk" automatic indictment sailed long ago. The Moderators have little patience with this kind of talk, tantamount to racism, and will keep such discussion on...

Keep it clean, sand it to 220, raise the grain a couple of times, be sure all glue is removed from the surface, remove or fix all dings or other small damage, that's about it. Oh, and did I mention...

I have No. 137, from 2001, standard model, not vintage voicing. Judge for yourself in the ham-handed hands of an amateur.


https://vimeo.com/118517644

I do it with plexiglass templates. I figure the angle (of the neck heel to body joint) at about 6 degrees, and while the neck blank is still square enough to use the miter gauge in the table saw, I...

Here is a two stage jig I built several years ago. The top piece that's holding the neck is set at an angle and can be used by itself to angle the end of the neck and cutting the curved face that...

I use a single screw that secures the guard to the side of the mandolin in the area of the linings. The tension from this single screw maintains pressure on two pins which locate into the side of the...