The Luthier Community

Well, we worked on getting the neck caught up with the rest of the build. Thicknessed the peghead and cut it to shape and shaped the neck heel to size
We spent most of the afternoon just trying to figure out what was where. We are following the Roger Siminoff book, the supposed authority, right? Wrong, This book leaves out the details you need. Scale length? not there. Google it up, then add up his fret to fret measurements, and it doesn't match. He says to cut the top off at the 15th fret position, but no way to measure where that is on the body. I could go on and on. Lots of "Do this" in the book, But very little "How to do this". Our running joke is that he wrote this book so you could see that it is easier to buy a mandolin from him than build one. End of rant,

g

Looking good guys! And hey, appreciate the insight into the authority......... isn't that so often the way it is, lol!

Interesting build! Sort of validates my thought that it would take a lot of new skills to build a mandolin like that. It looks like it is going well.

Certainly is a different animal from a guitar, but fun and interesting. Picking up a few ideas that I can use to finish my "Snapper" archtop.

g

Looking forward to you describing the cutting of the binding and purfling channels. I’ve not had what I’d consider good success with those processes on an F-5.
Tom

Not much happening this past week. Just ordering parts, tuners, bridge and pick guard.

Did make a fret slotting template. Here, again, He just gave fret to fret measurements, which will compound any errors if you lay out this way. Need to use nut to fret distances, which I had to go through and add up to get the numbers. Maybe not a big deal, but just another example of another thing that could have been easily provided and was not. Am I being too picky??

g

Definitely not too picky. Nut to fret measurements is the way to go.

StewMac has a great (free) fret calculator on their website. Don't know if it does mandolins, but I have printed out a number of different guitar scales, nut to fret and fret to fret on all of them.

Mike