One more thing

I have been helping my daughter make a cookie tin banjo today - great fun! Also, my lovely wife bought me the Robert Benedetto archtop guitar making book for Christmas - another project methinks...

Binding Ledges

I cut the ledges for the ebony bindings using the little dremmel tool that came from Stew Mac. Unfortunately, it was a bit more brutal than I thought it would be, and was not quite as accurate as I had hoped. However, my homemade scraper (old bit of saw blade in a beech housing) came to the rescue and I reasonably happy with end result.

I will try and put the bindings in before the new year.

Here's the belly in place...

It looks like a mandolin

Its nearly midnight, but the belly is on and trimmed and sanded and I'm mighty pleased with progress.

Gluing on the belly

I took a last look at the inside and then stuck the belly on with Titebond glue. I feel that this bit is quite important in how the mandolin will sound so I am keeping my fingers crossed until tomorrow morning...

a sound attempt

Herewith an attempt at a short recording made with the solid-body mandola. Not exactly rock and roll I know, and it took a while for me to figure out how to do it. The recording was...

made using the line-out from my little amp plugged directly into the line-in on a computer
transferred as a .wav file to another computer on a floppy disk
burnt onto a CD
ripped back into an MP3
and finally FTP'd

phew

The inside was varnished (one coat of a water soluble varnish). Before this I stuck in my label (a snail, because it's taking so long to make) which was drawn in indian ink.