Another thanks to all who helped

[Brookside]

I didn't want to hijack Crawdad's thread but I also wanted to thank everyone who has been so helpful and encouraging throughout my first build. The information that is shared here truly makes it possible for a guy like me who has never built a thing in his life.

I also really appreciated knowing of you first-timers like myself who have just begun this journey into creating these instruments. It made that first trip feel not so lonely.

Here's a couple of pics, strung up for the first time. Lots of work left but close enough to call a mandolin.

[Brookside]

the back doesn't arch enough...

[Brookside]

side view looks OK...from a distance.

[Bluemando]

looks good brookside. was it a kit or scratch built?
how about a close up of that headstock?

[crawdad]

Brookside--It looks awesome to me! I see an awful lot of really good stuff in this one. Welcome to the #1 club! Boy, they are popping out of the woodwork, aren't they? You've done some fine work. That binding looks perfect. Can't wait to see the finished piece. Very nice. Race you to #2...you give me a two week head start, maybe? LOL!

[Yonkle]

Looks great Brookside. I just strung mine in the white last week, stained two days ago, now I am scraping the binding. What a pain in the butt. Scraping the scroll area is not too fun, slow going, and easy to scratch the finish if not careful. So have fun, staining and scraping!
Your back look awesome! Let see some finish shots. JD

[Brookside]

Thank you guys. It was a scratch build and I will get a close-up of the headstock later.

Would you guys recommend trying to tape off the binding, or just suffer through the scraping? Both seem like such a tedious method.

[crawdad]

I just scraped mine, but I kept thinking I should have taped it! Even if I still had some scraping to do, it would have been less. After doing about 1/4 of the scraping, I kind of got the hang of that technique. Any way you slice it, its slow and tedious. Hey, but what aspect of building an F5 isn't? LOL!

[Brookside]

I think I'm going to tape my binding when I stain it. I think it was Jim Hilburn who posted pictures of his pre-stained mando with the binding all taped up. Seems like a chore either way. You're so right Crawdad. Very few steps of the process I would consider a breeze. The binding was the biggest surprise for me. It looked so easy in the book and I didn't anticipate any difficulty. I'm confident it will go better next time.

[resonant68]

Nice work!
BTW,I scraped my first and it was disasterous.not to mention a lot of work.I got tired and let the razor blade slip off the edge of the binding and put a gash in the back.I had to sing 3 verses of Jesus Loves Me to keep from smashing it to bits!!!
I taped the binding on my next one and it was GRAVY compared to the first.Still had to do a little clean up with the razor,but it was much easier.
I used plain ole masking tape from the hdwe store.I just cut it with a clean straight edge and all went well.
Congrats on your first and welcome to the club!
later,ronnie.

[Skip Kelley]

Nice job! Would like to see it finished!