Saturday, November 29, 2014

Phil’s Twin Point Mandolin

Phil’s twin-point mandolin was finally completed this week and shipped out to him. There are some choice photos of it below: Indian rosewood backs and side, Adirondack soundboard and a maple neck.

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New Home Page

Just updated the photos on the home page of my website. I’ve gone for black and white photos this time and they are themed to emphasis the fact that my instruments are handmade. Take a look if you’ve got time ;-)
Cheers Gary

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Thursday, November 27, 2014

The Book of British Guitar Making

Whist having a browse in W H Smiths today, I stumbled across this “bookazine” published by Acoustic magazine; to give it, its complete title, The Book of British Guitar Making: The Essential Guide To Bespoke Acoustic Luthiery in the United Kingdom. And whilst browsing through it came across an article about Gary Nava! I must say it came as a bit of surprise, basically it’s a re-print of an interview that appeared in Acoustic magazine in November 2009, although there are no photos of my current work, in particular my mandolins, it’s great to be included.

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Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Job satisfaction

It’s funny how satisfying the completion of some tasks is. In a previous post, I mentioned the mitres in purflings. Here’s another, today I fitted the cover to control recess on Paul’s e-mando. Although the recess itself, is routed using a template, the cover is fitted by hand.

The cover is laminated with a cross veneer to stop any possibility of it splitting along the grain and backed with copper foil for shielding; fixed in place with some nice plated raised head screws. Well, it makes me happy!

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Saturday, November 01, 2014

As previously mentioned……….

In the last post, I said of Ewart’s mandolin, “I make two fine cuts at the end of the mandolin. Later on, the wood between these two cuts will be chiselled out and this is where the end graft will go and eventually join up with the purflings and bindings.”
I thought that I’d illustrate the above with a few photos for you…..


Also in the previous post, I mentioned Paul’s e-mando; one of the exciting things about this project is that this e-mando is going off 10,400 miles to NSW, Australia! So, here’s a bit more detail about its construction so far.
I always like to route the wiring through inside of the body of my electric instruments; this means I have to make the body from at least two pieces of wood which allows me to create internal channels.


Before the two halves are glued together the internal channels are painted with conductive paint to help with shielding.
Once the body has been joined and taken down to its final thickness, the neck pocket, pick-up and control recesses etc are routed and then the shape cut-out. 



The wide black line that you can see in the pick-up recess is the conductive painted, internal channel.

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