Mandocello Soundboard Part I

I've just started carving the soundboard for Jonathan’s mandocello and here’s a description of the process so far.

Carved top soundboards come in the shape of chunky wedges and the first thing is to plane one surface of each piece completely flat.

With one flat surface, the join can then be tackled, however before I started to shoot the joint, I cut two slices of the spruce away, to use later as braces.

The join in a carved top soundboard has to be perfect all the way through and it takes a lot of time and skill to achieve this when working solely with hand tools.

Once the joint has been glued, the back surface has to be trued-up and the ‘board taken down to the required thickness and then the shape can be cut out.

Now we look at the profile of the soundboard. After much thought, design and planning, the first wood is removed and this will be a flat area to which the fretboard will eventually be glued.

Then I use the Wagner Safe-T-planner! A tool not for the faint-hearted, but very effective at generating a rebate around the edge of the soundboard. 

The rebate gives you a target to aim for once you start shaping the profile. First I like to work along the centre line and all of the shaping is done with a selection of planes. 

Wood is gradually taken away until the profile fits the template. 

With this profile shaped, I then start working at 90 degrees to the centre line.

More soon……………..

Bit of a delay

I’ve been out of action for a bit due to an operation on my sinuses. The recovery has taken longer than I had anticipated and one problem that I’m having is that I can’t wear a dusk mark or respirator at the moment. This is particular nuisance as I should be sanding down and spraying Andy D’s cutaway. There are couple of shots below, the snakewood and paua is quite something.

I won’t be able to make the delivery date and can only apologise profusely. You can see that it’s going to be a beauty and, hopefully Andy will agree, well worth the wait.

Head designs

Whilst I can’t get into the workshop, I’ve been doing some design work. In the previous post you would have seen the pink ivory rosettes; I’ve been designing the heads for these two instruments (a nylon string guitar and baritone ukulele) and have sent the designs off for approval. The challenge is getting a shape that will work aesthetically with both instruments and mechanically i.e. mounting good quality tuners, string clearance etc. Also Morgan, who is overseeing the project, has quite defined ideas about what is wanted: fortunately we seem to be on the same wavelength!

Once I’m back in the workshop and these two get underway properly I’ll post some fuller details.

Also, you may remember the Red mandolin: this has been on the back burner for a while, but I’ve now had an offer for it from Alan and he has the opportunity for some input into its design. He would prefer a slimmer head design, so below is the modified shape.

Mandocello

Jill (future mandolin) asked a while ago about the mandocello: well there’s a nice little review of it on the Acoustic guitar magazine forum.

Many thanks for that Andrew and Jane, I’m delighted that you’re still happy with it!
Whilst on the subject of the Mandocello, you might have seen my demo video on YouTube; I can’t believe that it’s had almost a 1000 viewings!
That’s enough for now: my nose is starting to bleed again!!

Repairs, reading and more wood!

Mandocello

You can see that the neck and fingerboard are now on the mandocello, it’s been fretted and the next step will be to carve the neck. This will be followed by a big clean-up prior to French polishing. I’m still really pleased about the way it looks and I think I’d like to try a guitar this shape.

Repair work

Whilst on the subject of fretting, I’ve just had this 20 year old Strat to re-fret and refurbish. You can see the frets were worn away to practically nothing and the bridge was heavily corroded.

So it’s had its re-fret and quite a few new parts from WD Music and it has now been rehabilitated and is ready take its palace in society again.




More wood!!

I’ve just got a batch of 20 prime ebony fingerboards in. This is the first time that I’ve directly imported myself rather than buy from a specialist dealer. The package arrived from India wrapped in a hand-sown muslin package and sealed with wax! The boards are really top quality, some of the best I’ve seen for a while. They will go into storage and I probably won’t use any of them for at least two years.

Below is a great way to store them; the boards are spaced apart with strips of plywood to allow air-flow and then tied together using cable ties. This keeps them flat and easy to move around.

A good read

I’ve just got hold of this book Blue Guitar by Ken Vose. I’ve been after it for a few years, but it’s always so expensive, fortunately I got this for a good price on eBay. There are 21 arch top guitars (all blue) custom built by luthiers for a collector. There are some fantastic instruments here; a very inspiring book! I must get on with Andy’s.............

Building the Mandocello

The baritone guitar is going through the final finishing stages and you can see it below.

The real work on the mandocello has now started; it’s an interesting build, so I thought I’d put a fair bit on the blog about it. Firstly its shape, in an earlier blog, I mentioned the Music from the Woods of England project and I proposed an unusual shaped guitar for it. See below.

When Andrew and Jane approached me about building them a mandocello, this shape immediately sprang to mind. When I did the original drawing, I decided that I didn’t want a shape that looked like it belonged to a particular time or place. Also I’ve always felt that the best place for the bridge of an instrument is the centre of the lower bout. These two factors got me sketching and hence the idea evolved. I’m very grateful to Andrew and Jane for going with this design; all artisans need patrons with some vision.

With 8 strings and a narrow neck, I’ve decided to reinforce it with two strips of carbon fibre and an adjustable truss-rod. I’m becoming much more confident with the carbon-fibre, the neck of the bass that I recently completed for my son is supported in exactly the same way and it hasn’t moved at all and that’s without the adjustable rod being tightened. I’ve taken the carbon-fibre right through the head joint which will greatly strengthen this area too.



The soundhole is oval so I had to make up a jig in order to cut the channel for the rosette and the hole. Being oval, each piece of mother of pearl had to be shaped individually to fit.

For the sides I’ve made up the external mould in four sections. It’s a bit odd cutting the sides into short sections before bending them, you keep double checking before sawing them! The back and sides are being made from some really beautiful English walnut.

Once the sides were bent, the four pieces are joined together by blocks of wood. The tail block is made from plywood. This going to have a hole drilled through it for a jack socket and the tail-piece attached to it; ply is the obvious choice so that it doesn’t split.

These heavy duty rubber bands and strips of plywood are a very effective way of clamping the awkward shape of the sides into the mould. Also they help to keep the overall weight of the mould down. The mould plus a dozen clamps gets extremely heavy and you run the risk of dropping the lot as you work on the sides.

All the other blocks are made from Honduras Cedar; it’s both very light and extremely stable. The linings will also be made from Cedar. Another reason for using Honduras Cedar or “Cigar box cedar” is that it gives the inside of the instrument a nice aroma; how’s that for attention to detail, worrying about how your instrument smells!