Left handed e-mando II

Good progress made with Chris’s e-mando; essentially, most of the woodwork is done, so I shall now get it set-up, wired and playing and when I’m 100% happy with it, I’ll take it apart and apply the finish!

Left handed e-mando

Well, you can see below that Chris’s electric mandolin is definitely a lefty!

 And here are a few shots of the tailpiece being made- by hand, no CNC here.

Two Backs

Two quite different mandolins on the go here.....

Mark's Standard Plus

This weekend saw Mark’s left-handed, Standard Plus completed and delivered. It has English walnut back and sides with a red spruce (Adirondack) soundboard. I’ll let the photos do the talking!

In the white?

You may have noticed that I often use the term, “In the white.” This is a term borrowed from violin making and refers to the instrument (which is made from white woods i.e. maple and spruce) before the typical reddish-brown varnish is applied.

This week saw the construction of Mark’s left-handed mandolin completed and it strung up in the white. I thought that I’d run through that process for you. At the top of the page is Mark's mandolin freshly sanded and in the white!

The first task is to fit the bridge blank to the curve of the soundboard. Once it’s been roughly shaped at the bench, the final fitting is done on the soundboard itself, with an abrasive paper. To ensure as good a fit as possible- the white pencil marks highlight which areas aren’t making contact.

Finally I like to use a feeler gauge to make sure there aren’t any gaps.

Once the base is fitting, the rest of the bridge can be shaped. The saddle is notched for the strings and shaped roughly for the intonation. With so many mandolins under my belt, I pretty much know how much compensation the strings need.

Before the tuners are fitted, it’s wise to seal the back of the head and put on a layer of masking tape. You’ll find that all brand new tuners have a lubricant put on by the manufacturer and unless the bare wood is protected, that lubricant will leach into the wood and stain it.

Below is the tailpiece that I’ve made and that has to be fitted into position.

The bone nut has to be carefully marked out and the slots roughly cut to depth.

Double check, and then we’re ready to put some strings on………

The nut’s slots are then carefully filed to the final depth; I use a feeler gauge between the underside of the string and the top of the first fret to measure the action.

Once I’m happy with the string height at the 1st fret, the action at the 12^th fret can be adjusted by filing the saddle. With the strings at the correct height, the intonation can then tweaked by adjusting the point where the string breaks over the saddle.

The mandolin will now be left, under tension, for a few days and once it has settled down any fine tuning to the action or intonation can be done.

By the way, that's a day and half''s work!

Making Progress

This week the neck and fretboard went on to Mark’s Standard Plus mandolin; it’s all coming together nicely.  And here you can see the first outward signs of its left-handedness. I normally start my dots at the 5th fret, but this is just a small custom feature for Mark.

I’ve bent the Indian rosewood sides for Jonathan’s mandocello and in the sequence of photos below you can see a very simple method of holding the sides into the mould………..

............Using rubber bands and strips of wood, keeps your clamps free for other jobs and also keeps the whole assembly light. Half-a-dozen clamps and a chipboard mould can get quite heavy and you really don’t want to drop it!

 And here’s another size comparison for you.

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.