Don’t you just love mandolins!

Here’s brilliant new video of “Mr Charlie Pig” playing “Tripping up the Stairs” on his Nava Standard Plus mandolin. Great playing! Enjoy!

And in case you’re wondering. All the constructional work on Patrick’s twin point is now complete; it’s been set-up and is now being polished. Here are a couple of photos of it, in the white, before it was disassembled.

The demise of the cocktail stick

When you glue the fretboard on to any instrument, the alignment has got to be spot on, as any error is magnified along the length of the instrument. I’ve always used some kind of pin that goes into both the neck and fretboard as a method of ensuring that fretboard doesn’t move around whilst being glued.

For many years, cocktail sticks were my favourite choice of pin; they used to be a consistent diameter and made from beech- ideal! However, these days they are of a much poorer quality, inconsistent size and made from bamboo which tends to split. OK I guess for cheese and pineapple chunks but not for precision work!

So now, I make up pins from silver steel rod, which I must say is far superior!

Here’s Patrick's fretboard waiting to be glued on.

A simple plywood caul spreads the pressure.

And here we have the fretboard in perfect alignment!

Patrick's Twin Point

Here’s an update on what has been happening with Patrick’s twin-point. The body is now together and I’ve just completed the purflings and bindings. As you can see, I use tape to hold the purflings in place whilst the glue sets.

 I like to use ebony bindings on my twin-points; not only does it look good, the ebony makes for a very robust "point". It never ceases to amaze me, how readily ebony will bend and here good old cloth tape is used to hold the bindings in place whilst gluing.

 Once all of the piece have been glued on (in this case 20 separate pieces) it’s a big clean-up. The bindings are always proud of the surface and have to be taken down flush with the body. For ebony it’s best to use a cabinet scrapper- if you sand, you run the risk of grinding ebony dust into the other surfaces. A dust mask is always a wise precaution with cocobolo.

 

And after a good half a day’s work…….

At the same time I’ve been making the tailpiece.

On this one I’ve used ebony and cocobolo and you can see how it complements the body.

 Next stage, fit the neck.