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As promised. Two recordings made in a quick one hour session on a portable digital recorder. Ignore the mistakes in interpretation please, the musician had just few minutes to try to adopt to a...

Thank you. I will send a sound file when I record it.

158884

Unfortunately I don`t play. I have a friend who is a concertmaster of the symphonic orcestra and great guitar player. I am hoping to record few test notes of him playing my mandolin.

I wonder one...

Small pleasures of finishing touches.

There was one piece of MOP that was original and it was left on. Two pieces where latter, bad fitted adition, Those where replaced with MOP that is quite a...

Back side of the head was redone similar as the front, but here, as pointed out few posts back, TS was remowed, since flatening in situ was imposible due the structural change of the wood underneath,...

Since the conservation is the first goal of this restoration/conservation work, and regarding the delicate nature of TS use, I decided to go with conservators advice to use similar material for...

SInce the TS on the back of the pegs head was warped and it cant be flatened properly in situ, I took it of. It will be soaked under the preasure in the salted near boiling water for a short period...

Some time ago Alex kindly posted the photos of the bridge of his Fabricatore. I decided to copy that one. 70mm long, 3,5mm thick, mine is lover at 4,5-5mm for the action slightly under 2mm at #12...

While waiting for a material needed for pegs head restoration, I started to work on the bridge. Prepared the blank from a block of ebony. Cut it to oversized dimensions. Finished the thicknes and the...

Thanks Eoin,
yes it will end up as a nice example of early mandolin. I was lucky to get quite solid material to work on. Still some work to be done though.
Restoration, conservation, making it...

In one piece after all. Pleasure for my eyes.

Tape glued, firs time for me, using hide glue. Neck block area was glued the day before. Somehow I found it easier to manipulate plate/bowl assembly...

Nut was missing, new one made, fitted and glued. Will be finished later in the set up process. Small piece in the bottom of the nut grove was ebony so I decided to go that way.

Lost mastik near...

Thankfully, one original peg survived. New ones came out quite nicely. Still need to do polishing.

157003

Ebony frets are ready and will be glued after the top is glued back. No. 2 and 4 are original ones, others remade. 0,4 mm thick, 1,2 mm wide.

Frets are not of uniform lenght. They create slight...

Finished patch.

156931

I failed to find two same bridges from 1795-1798 Fabricatore mandolins on net. It loks like each and one was made diferently for each mandolin.
This are examples I...

One more thing of structural importance needed to be solved before closing the box. Pins area crack.
Probaly one of the bigest weekneses, in other aspects very carefuly thought out neapolitan...

Well, top is cleaned. I may do it even cleaner but not sure yet if I would prefere that.
I am in contact with the guys from the musical collection of German national museum in Nuremberg. I will...

This is before and after. I must say that I was surprised with the amount of dirt that was cowering the original varnish. Now the wood is showing it`s natural aperance again. I am very satisfied with...

It`s my pleasure Jeremy.

Didn`t expect varnish on the bowl to be on the thick side, but as it can be seen on the areas where varnish is damged it was quite thickly applied.

After nine hours,...

Although it is time consuming, to clean this, took almost 3 hours, I think that saliva or arteficial saliva is still the safest enzyme cleaner avaliable. Applied with cotton sticks, worked with light...

It took a couple of days to sort out this small area but it is rewarding to look at the comparation between the before and after photographs.
Working on this kind of instrument realy makes one...

Thank you John,
I was under the impression that there was some another material covering the paper layer. But it could be just acumulation of dirt and sweat build up during the years, where...

First steps of getting this mess sorted.

Before, and after cleaning the paper shims thet where found in place where tortoise was missing.
Triangle shape on the back of the had will be restored...

Hi, it`s been a while. I had a spine surgery, wasn`t sure if I woud be able to work again. But I am thankfully back on work at least for 2-3 hours per day.

It`s an old topic I know, but I decided...