Mandolins progressing.........

In the last post, you saw the tailpiece that I had just completed for Andrew’s twin-point. This week I’ve set the mandolin up, prior to its finishing; one of the things that I love about making instruments with floating bridges is that, you can get it set-up and playing perfectly before finishing.

I spend long time setting-up my mandolins, adjusting the action and intonation to what I consider to be the optimum for it.

Also, this week has seen the neck fitted to David’s Standard mandolin. I use a type of open mortice and tenon joint on my mandolins. I decided to use this type of joint long ago rather than the dovetail that I use on guitars; the reason being I was concerned that narrow part of its tail would be quite thin on comparatively narrow neck of a mandolin. You can see from the photos below my joint is really chunky, so masses of strength and surface area for the adhesive.

These days I use epoxy for my neck joints- the joints are so snug and accurate that I don’t need clamps. I find that if you use Titebond on such a close fit, the moisture in it makes the wood swell and the joint locks up before the neck is in its correct place!