building an f style mandolin

We start with a solid spruce top which was deeply carved. F5 Pro. I also needed to lay out the positions of the tonebars. Make a fine F-style mandolin and save hours of work! Whether it be a “Master” or “Country Boy” all RATLIFF mandolins are built to the highest exacting levels of … I’m going to keep following the StewMac process, and glue the back on, remove the neck and then bind the body before aseembling everything later. A proper heat gun is what you need to get the binding hot enough to bend easily. Maybe that just causes several sets of problems rather than one? I've been building mandolins for over thirty years and I still learned some new tricks. FREE Shipping by Amazon. Exclusive: 15% OFF StewMac Luthier's Digital Caliper, Instrument Building, Maintenance and Repair Books, Plans and DVDs, Guitar Building, Repair and Setup Books, Plans and DVDs, LEARN MORE about StewMAX Membership Benefits, Torrefied Sitka Spruce Top Wood for Mandolin or Violin, Find the proper fret position with the official Stewart-MacDonald Fret Calculator, Stewart-MacDonald is PCI compliant and validated for secure e-commerce. This planning has turned out to be very useful, and in some ways now I’m glad it happened: it isn’t a disaster, the untrained eye will never notice. With a large sheet of stiff transparent plastic clamped to the blueprint, I traced a cross from the centre line, and the bridge line, which I had marked onto the blueprint, and then traced the f holes onto the template. On the back, I was more careful to bend the kerfing gradually, using a number of slots to make the bend and it didn’t break: in this picture I’m gluing the final section of kerfing into place on the top. Eastman MD314 Mandolin $ 960.00 $ 769.00. The mandolin isn't solid birch or mahogany but veneers . All challenging wood cutting, drilling and shaping is already done professionally, as well as fret leveling and dressing. Made in China. I’ll leave these markings on the top until it’s nearly finished, and update the measurements as I go. Ultimately there is some play here, as you can adjusst the bridge height with the thumbwheels later. Problem one: setting the routing attachement on the Dremel tool properly. Some of this will come out in sanding, so will end up pretty close to the correct measurements. The Stew Mac binding laminator is well worth getting: I’m not sure this would have tunred out at all well without it, or something similar to  hold the bindings together as you apply the acetone. Many of us can’t afford a good mandolin or maybe take pride it doing things ourselves. We use all top-quality woods and workmanship to make every kit a potential heirloom. I was still nervous about going too thin, and eleceted to stay somewhere about half a mm short of the dimensions on the blueprint. The trick is to make sure that you leave about 1mm of kerfing protruding above the sides when you glue it in: then you can level the kerfing down to the sides with sandpaper, creating a level surface for gluing the top to. The height can be measured easily, but the depth of the cut can’t. After finishing carving the top the next jobs are to mark out the top for the f-holes and fix the tone bars to the inside of the top. Rogue RM-100A A-style mandolin. You need to pay attention to the direction of the grain when carving: if you try carving against the grain, the plane will chatter across the wood, which will tear a little. I’d be tempted in the future to cut the entire scroll slot after assembling the body on a band saw, and cut the top, back and mahogany in one operation, but am starting to realise that the scroll creates a lot of extra work and thinking than an A-shaped mandolin, especially aafter cutting the binding notches. Ex: 660mm divided by 25.4 equals 25.98" inches. Bonding the fingerboard bindings is more difficult: the fingerboard has one tall piece of binding, with two thin pieces bonded to its edge, to create a thin black line around the bottom of the binding: this isn’t essential, but it looks nice. Holding the spruce up to a strong light was also helpful in identifying thicker areas. The first was the teardrop-shaped A-style, which debuted in 1902. It takes a skilled, detailed woodworker to create and bind this intricate design. I don’t know. I used a bradawl to open up a hole in the centre of each of the circular areas at the en of each f-hole, and then opened it up with files more or less to the right size. I did lose a point from the top, but that was found and  glued straight back on: you will never know. I sat on the floor, gripped it between my knees, prayed to gods and went for it. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how best to do this: the only experience I’ve got of carving anything is whittling some sticks with a pen knife. With a straight edge, I could see that the recurve was already established around the rim, and the scroll was already shaped a good deal. It wasn’t until the ext day that I thought to myself ‘hang on, how do I know if that slot is in the right place’ and when I checked, the slot dives much too deeply towards the body. Duh. I cannot put off any more the next step: routing the binding slot. The StewMac and Siminoff processes are quite different here: in the Siminoff book, the neck is glued in before the back is glued on and the binding done: following the StewMac process completes the binding before gluing the neck into the dovetail. I chose to quit building the F-5 in 1994. During this process, I managed to put one of the chisels through my finger. I was able to spot this and correct it, but I do have a large nick out of the bottom edge of the scroll slot about three-quarters the way around as a result. This is a must-have for the novice builder. Hard shell case included. This will be hidden by the binding, so it’s not a big problem, but I will need to be careful when I cut the binding notch not to let the ebony split. The first  step in the process is to glue the kerfed lining to the sides. This finely crafted mandolin features incredible procection for soloing and chopping. The dog-leg micro chisels from StewMac are a really good set of tools for this job, with some needle files. You can see markings on the wood here showing areas to carve, and areas to avoid. Then I used a coping saw to cut the inter-connecting part of the hole, keeping well inside the pencil line and taking care to cut with the grain. At the beginning of the carving, no light came through the wood at all, but when the top was finished, a warm orange glow spread out from the centre of the wood to a bright strip that ran all the way around the rim. Leave a Comment ». I chose to make a tempalte from the blueprint, as it would be easier to make a tempalte that allowed for the thickness of the bings that way. Use the fingerboard calculator in the LMI Help Center to be sure your choices will fit on the board you chose. Now halfway through number 2 with the video I'm amazed at how many secrets I know now. I think I’ll fill those bit first. The classic shape and size of an F-style mandolin make them popular projects for the advanced builder. I manged to break one of the strips of kerfing whilst trying to fit it around the curve inside the waist of the mandolin, so had to glue two pieces along that side. Thanks Don! More Buying Choices $129.99 (2 new offers) Related searches. I was a bit apprehensive paying $125 for a video. Sale! Mandolin A Style Acoustic Electric Mandolins Instrument Vintage Red Sunburst Mahogany Wood for Beginner Adults, by Vangoa. Some sort of fabricated jig? The lining provides a surface that the top of the mandolin will be glued to. Cutting mahogany with a coping saw is really tough: the wood is really hard. The Loar LM-520-VS Mandolin Case and Pro Set Up $ 799.00 $ 599.00. Then I was able to cut out the f-holes from the plastic with a stanley knife, and then position the plastic over the top of the mandolin, line up the centre lines and bridge lines, and then trace the f-holes onto the wood in the right position for cutting out from the wood. This blog documents the building of an F5 Mandolin, from a stew mac kit. I hope it’s useful for anyone else embarking on a similar project, and that my experiences might be helpful in helping others avoid the inevitable mistakes I’ll end up making. I do like to keep my hands on the instrument throughout the entire building process; it helps me get a feel for the progress of each particular instrument. Re-bending bit of binding you’ve already tried to bend doesn’t seem to work too well. Siminoff, a renowned author and luthier, applies over four decades of experience to guide beginners to pros through detailed chapters on wood selection, cutting, carving, shaping, assembly, inlays, fretting, binding and assembly of an F-style mandolin. Pava’s flagship F-Style mandolin, featuring an adirondack spruce top and red maple back and sides. The next thing to get lined up properly is the height of the neck: after getting it straight, removing wood from both sides of the dovetail allows the neck to sit down into the joint until the fingerboard is at the right height: this was more tricky, and you need to keep checking the neck is still straight as you go: it took a long time to finally settle on the setup that seemed to be right. This form allows for a variety of parts and material to be attached to a rim which will give a general shape similar to the instrument described. Out Of Stock. I imagine this whole setup will move after the mandolin gets strung up, and it will need checking again before gluing the neck in. After a couple of sessions carving and measuring, carving and measuring, the back is approaching it’s final dimensions. The big lesson learned is to make this ledge wide enough from the begining: once it’s established it’s easy enough to carry it on down to make the slot for the binding, but it is really hard to widen it if it’s too narrow. F-Style Mandolin; Mandolin Brands . Please note: no instructions are included. DON'T MISS A BEAT, sign up for StewMac news. I was going to go round the mandolin i two passes anyway, so as long as the first cut was shallower than need be, I’d be OK. Between 1982 and 1994 I built over 100 mandolins including dozens of F-5 copies. Could not get all of the pudding off so it was easier to touch up after staining and the first coat of gloss. On the front, the wood chattered and frayed a little, but has glued back together without a sign, on the back I lost a small  chip out from near the rim: I couldn’t find it to glue it back in, so I don’t think it came out in one piece. The cross piece sits around the neck’s dovetail joint and sits underneath the fingerboard. Even so, bending the binding aorund the scroll is hard, and the bending the scroll end of the longest peice of binding is a real pain to get right: my attempts (several so far) have all ended up with the binding crinkling on the inside of the bend. Did you spot the mistake there? Our Latest mandolin reviews Compare popular mandolins. To hold the linings in place while the glue dries you will need to modify some clothes pegs: I made one side of the peg flat, to rest against the outside of the sides, and deepened the notch on the other side to fit around the jerfing: and then added a rubber band to make the clamp strong enough to hold the lining firmly in place. F-STYLE GOLD STANDARD MANDOLIN PROTOTYPE This is an interpretation of the classic Gibson F-5 mandolin. It’s come out OK: there’s plenty of good binding to bind the fingerboard. There is also further work to do on the bouts, around the points, and around the button, which I’ve cut out now: all told this has taken three or four quite long painstaking sessions, but I’m ready now to start to attach the binding to the body, and to the fingerboard. I shaped the bottom of the clothes peg so it would follow the contour of the top as accurately as possible. If someone were to ask me how to go about building a high quality mandolin, I'd suggest three resources. Building an F5 Mandolin – Carving the Back, Building and F5 Mandolin – Gluing the Top, Bulding an F5 Mandolin: F-holes and Tone Bars. Then I marked out the shape around the bottom of the fingerboard and finished it off with files around the small curves. On the otherside of the mandolin, things are much easier. But Don takes time to show what he does when building from scratch. It is not HD by any means. And while you can still find bowl- and flat-backed mandolins, the vast majority of today’s instruments are descended from Gibson’s A and F. F-Style Mandolins Posted in Building an F5 Mandolin on March 1, 2011| It took me all day. What you are paying for and getting is the years of experience of Don MacRostie. I also made some spool clamps to hold the top to the sides when gluing it on: I bought 20 bolts and wing nuts, a metre of one-inch dowel and some cork coasters. $49.00. The top provided with the kit needs to be carved to it’s final shape and dimensions, graduating smoothly from something like 5mm in the centre to less than 3mm thick around the edges. Eastman Mandolins . But I did and am glad of it. Titebond has a longer open time than hide glue, but I still felt the need to move pretty quickly to get everything clamped up: it is well worth rehearsing the clamping, and know exactly where each clamps is going to go, how many you need for each side and so on. The improved version of the classic Fender Strat Bridge. If you are also building a Stew Mac kit, the first thing to do is throw away the instructions that come with the kit: they are hopeless. I was decidedly nervous about this: ioon the MacRostie video, he drills out the holes at each end of the f-holes and then cuts out the joining piece in about 2 minutes. F-Style Mandolins . Washburn Americana Series F-Style all-solid Mandolin with carved European spruce top, carved Canadian figured maple back, and figured maple sides, 1-1/4″ bone nut, and vintage distressed cosmetics. This is a high-end mandolin with all the most important features and building techniques that define a stage-ready F-style mandolin. The earlier planning I did after cutting the slot for the scroll in the top was very helpful here as I had already thought about a lot of it.

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