On the bench; Jan 2015

Currently, I’m working on Mark’s Standard Plus mandolin, I've just cleaned up the maple bindings and you can see the results below.

One thing that you can’t see at the moment is that this one, is a left handed mandolin. Nothing on the outside to give that away, but my bracing is asymmetrical so, internally it’s a lefty! Evidently, about 10% of the population is left handed, so it’s logical that one in ten of my instruments should be left handed, but this is the first left handed mandolin that I’ve ever made and I have only made one left handed guitar back in 2009. I find this quite surprising; you would think that being a custom builder of fretted instruments, players who can’t find a decent left handed guitar/mandolin would be seeking guys like me out???

I’ve also just started preparing for Jonathan’s……? Well, what to call it; it’s a five course instrument, tuned CGDAE. I’ve seen them called a liuto cantabile, but I think that would be a tad pretentious, so let’s call it a 10-string mandocello. The extra course gives it a top E, so it has the range of both a mandocello and octave mandolin.

Jonathan had one of my guitars a few years back and we’ve been talking about this project for a while.

You can get an idea of the size of the ‘cello, here’s Mark’s mandolin in its mould.