Archtop #3 completed!

The latest archtop is now complete. I’m very pleased with the outcome; if you’ve followed its construction from the beginning, you may remember that I said, “I feel a responsibility to make something beautiful, with my Brazilian rosewood.”
Hopefully you’ll agree that I’ve achieved that. Below are a number of photos for you- I’ll get a video done soon!

Bindings etc.

You’d have seen the custom bindings and purflings for Robin’s mandolin in the previous post. So here they are going on. The first step is cut the appropriate size rebates around the body; no mater how many times I’ve done it, it’s still a procedure best described "nerve-wracking".

Then the purflings can be glued in place. Just as an aside, I’ve started using this yellow tape from StewMac and it works incredibly well for this task. Getting a strong tape with the right amount of tack, isn't as easy as you'd think!

Next, I bend the ebony bindings to fit. With some woods you can use odds & ends for the bindings, but ebony has to be prime quality otherwise it just won’t bend the way you want it to.

Cloth tape holds the bindings in place whilst the glue dries and keep on going until all the pieces are in place……

After about 5 hours of careful scraping and sanding, we have the completed body.

Robin’s mandolin II

A brief update for you on Robin’s mandolin. You can see that the body is now together.

Also, the tailpiece is made.

Why make the tailpiece at this stage? Simply so that I can drill the hole for the jack socket accurately and without splintering the tail block.

In the previous post I mentioned the mandolin’s “discreet decorative theme”, well that involves making some custom bindings and purflings……