Jill's Mandolin VII

Well, the back of Jill’s mandolin has been bound and the neck fitted: you can see the sequence below.
A relatively large mortise is routed into the body of the mandolin using a router with a template follower. A matching tenon is cut on the neck: it takes a good few hours of fettling to get the neck perfectly aligned. Once the neck is in place a wedge, which supports the end of the fingerboard is fitted.

Next on is the fingerboard that you saw prepared in the previous entry. I like to plane the fingerboard to its final thickness and profile once it’s been glued to the neck. The dots go in next and then the fingerboard can be fretted.

The frets have to be carefully filed so that they are all level with each other. This process leaves a slight flat spot on the top of the frets which are then restored back to a curved crown using specialist files.

Now I start shaping the neck, the first few steps look a bit barbaric! The fine work starts tomorrow!

You may have wondered what’s happened to the Blackwood pair; Morgan came over for a couple of hours earlier today, to discuss the bridge design; so that should all unfold over the next week or so. More on that later.....