New Year’s Resolutions?

I’ve been listening to my new Xmas CD- Show of Hands, Wake the Union (thoroughly recommended) and I’ve been rather taken with Steve Knightley’s tenor guitar playing. So, I thought it might be nice to build one- then whilst at the bench today, that idea morphed into a matching mandolin and tenor guitar! How cool would that be?! However, I decided to reign myself in, as the metaphorical back burner is full with other incomplete projects that have been deferred. Although I’m not a great believer in New Year’s resolutions, I thought that I should set myself the target of completing those “back burner” projects. Still, I’m not complaining as these projects have been delayed due to the amount of commission work that I have.

This baritone ukulele was started just over a year ago. As you can see the maple/spruce body is complete and is awaiting the neck. Not too much to do on this one!

 I’ve been contemplating an electric mandolin for quite a while and whist I’ve been cogitating about the details I’ve put a body blank together from some figured Ash. The hole is for a threaded end-pin jack socket and there are channels cut inside the blank for wires to run through.

 This one isn’t far on at all! But I keep wanting to make a carved top mandolin and you can see that the top is glued up and ready to go. What’s been holding me up is the shape…………

 ………….you may remember my model 2 instruments? I really liked that shape so I thought  that it might interesting to scale it down to suit a mandolin and make both the electric and carved top to the same shape! Here’s my first draft of the new shape. I’ve pinned it up in the workshop and will decide if I like it before any more design work is done.

 Still thinking about a matching mandolin and tenor guitar though!