Things are getting busy

The electric mandolin has been sold and is now residing with its new owner, Gordon. The American black walnut mandolin, Standard V, is still available; this will probably be the last “Standard” for a while (until 2014) as I now need to concentrate on an influx of new commissions.

Mandolin For Sale

You can see below, that Nadim’s guitar and John’s mandolin are coming together nicely, the bodies are complete and now await their necks.

 I tend to use very little machinery in my workshop, but I have just recently treated myself to a 12 inch disc sander. Fellow woodworkers will know that planing end-grain can be a real pain and this is where a disc sander comes into its own.

It proved great for squaring up the heel of Nadim’s neck prior to marking out the dovetail.
One of the main reasons for getting the sander was to cope with truing up the “end” of my mandolins before the neck goes on. You can see that you have a combination of the end grain of the neck block, bindings, back and sides and soundboard that all have to be flattened, square and true, without any splitting. The sander does a grand job!

Whilst these two instruments are being constructed, I’ve been working on the design of the next two instruments; a double commission for a matching octave mandolin and tenor mandola; more on them in due course...............

Classical Guitars?

I've just completed the Classical Guitar section of my archive. There are two posts, Early Classical Guitars and More Recent Classical Guitars for those of you who are interested. I don't seem to have an abundance of photos, so if you have one of my classical guitars that's not there, please send a photo and I'll be happy to include it.
Cheers Gary

eMando on eBay

For those who are interested I just put my emando up for sale on eBay. 

 The listing is here  if you are interested. Putting instruments on eBay is a great way to reach an untapped audience and of course, you get the PayPal option.

 Just to round things off, here’s a lovely comment on from a Mandolin Café member about the emando, “This has to be one of the prettiest musical instruments of any sort, I've ever seen. I'll go further....I've never seen a more artistic use of wood.”

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS MANDOLIN HAS NOW BEEN SOLD

Question of scale!

Working on Nadim’s guitar and John’s mandolin at the same time, swopping from the size of one to the other, really makes my brain hurt! I keep picking up Nadim’s neck and thinking, “Nah, it’s too long!” but of course the distance from the nut to the 14^th fret is about the same as the scale length for the mandolin!

Here you can see both of the rims completed.

You may have noticed that head overlay on John’s mandolin is made from Thuya Burl. It is a very odd wood to work and you can read about it here.

 The Thuya Burl complements the Brazilian mahogany beautifully; so I’m going to use it in various places such as here….

…..the tailpiece cover and possibly the heel cap on John’s mandolin.