Making the "Navatone" tailpiece

With the woodwork on my LG50 replica completed, it’s time to do some metalwork! In this latest video, I make the tailpiece: as always things are more involved than you’d first think!

Mandocello tailpiece and future mandolins

The mandocello is now being French polished and whilst this process is going on, I’ve made its tailpiece. There didn’t seem to be a decent commercial mando’ tailpiece available so I decided to make one. Also I wanted it to be able to accommodate ball-end strings so it owner won’t have to source expensive, long, loop end strings.


A great help whilst making the tailpiece was my Axminster cross-vice, it allows you to use your pillar-drill like a vertical milling machine and you can see it being used here in conjunction with a router bit.

The finished tailpiece is below and I’ll test it this week.

Mandolins

Early next year I’m going to be building a mandolin for a lady called Jill. She likes quilted maple, so I was fortunate that my wood supplier was willing to prepare two slices for the back and sides and a matching neck blank all from the same board. You can see a piece of it below: it’s hard to believe that its surface is flat and smooth.

I’ve stared to build another mandolin for fun, from less usual “mandolin wood.” The photo below is not of sides of smoked salmon but some cocobolo (rosewood from Mexico)!

I’ve always liked the multiple piece backs that early fretted instruments had, so I thought that I would do something similar here. The middle piece of wood is Brazilian rosewood. It’s going to be quite something!