Re: Advice on first mandolin building kit/tutorial
I just received a StewMac F style kit and it's very nice. There is more work to do than with the Arches kit I built. The Arches CNC machining was smoother, and the scroll binding channels were pre cut as well as the headstock channels, plus the f holes were cut. But it was a couple hundred dollars more expensive.
The StewMac kit is a very traditional mandolin, with flat finger board and tiny frets. The maple back is very 3A flame and the spruce is very close grained. No complaints there. One thing is the headstock overlay is not as wide as the headstock. Fine if you are binding, but I was going to do an F5G simple non bound neck. The other thing is the binding needs to be glued together, but I had already decided to go one ply iveroid anyway, but a novice would have to glue all the thin strips together. But I'm nitpicking. The wood is very high quality.
Silverangel A
Arches F style kit
1913 Gibson A-1
Bookmarks