Thursday, September 05, 2024
Monday, August 05, 2024
Tuesday, July 16, 2024
Sunday, June 16, 2024
Wednesday, May 22, 2024
Rosette
The rosewood Standard that I’m currently building is a commission and the client wished for one of my dot and diamond rosettes. Here's a brief descripion of how it's done.
The recess for the rosette is cut and two strips of fine purfling glued into place.
Whilst the glue is drying, I get on with cutting
the diamonds using a very simple jig and razor saw.
After some super careful marking out the inlays are glued in place with CA adhesive.
And then the spaces around them are filled in black: this is what I refer to as the ugly duckling stage.
Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Saturday, May 18, 2024
Two Mandolins
The next step with the e-mando is to bend the lovely English walnut sides and laminate them to the main core of the body.
In parallel with the e-mando and I’m also making a rosewood
Standard (with a few extras!). So it make sense to work on both of the necks at
the same time. The spliced head joint is something that I do on all my
instruments.
You can see both necks have had the slots routed for the carbon-fibre inserts.
I’ve cut out pearl logos for both of them, although the method of inlaying is different. This because of the nature of the head overlays. The e-mando’s overlay is made up from layers of veneer and is quite fragile until it’s glued to the head. So that’s done first.
The Standard has a thick single layer of rosewood and it’s easier to cut right through this overlay, before gluing to the head!