Bit of a bind

The body of Brendan’s mandolin is now together and the Macassar ebony is looking really very good!

The next step is the purflings and bindings. First, however, I have to make the bindings; doing custom builds as I do, means you have to be willing to make one-offs and if that means making your own ebony with red line bindings, so be it.

You have to use prime quality ebony for the bindings,the grain has to be straight in order to bend it accurately. A piece of 25 mm wide ebony is laminated to red veneer with waterproof glue.

Once dry, the edge is trued with a plane and a length cut off on the bandsaw; the process is then repeated for each piece.

All the pieces are then sanded to around 2.5mm thick, ready for bending. I manged to get 5 strips this time- always nice to have a spare!