ThickShag - I'm A Musician, I'm A Programmer: November 2008

I described in Part 1 and Part 2 how I prepared for my F5 mandolin build. Using the help of expert luthier Lies Muller who runs her Muziek & Ambacht workshop in Utrecht, the Netherlands, I will build my first instrument ever. I attend a workshop once a month under Lies' supervision and using her tools as well.

In the meanwhile, my brother in law Freek (the one who got me the workmate), took me to see his collegue Wout Bosma, who is a master luthier jazz guitar maker who designs and builds his unique range of hollowbody guitars. He showed me around his workshop, and let me see and play his guitars, including a unique asymmetrical design with awesome wood binding and huge brass / ebony tailpiece, a Les Paul black beauty which was just "in a closet" somewhere, his massive collection of tools, and a guitar case which once belonged to dutch singer Bennie Joling (Normaal); all quite amazing. Wout was really encouraging about me starting out with the mandolin, which was really cool, he said; "You'll be hooked in a couple months".. To top things of, he gave me a huge pile of beautiful veneer material ranging from black woods to almost white; I already donated some to my fellow classmates for their projects. If you're starting building instruments, I encourage you to go meet other builders.

(Bennie Joling's Guitar Case)

(Jazz guitars by Wout Bosma)

(asymmetrical jazz guitar by Wout Bosma)

Visit Wout Bosma's website

Well, after I completed the inner support blocks for my mandolin within 1 mm tolerance to play with, I decided after visiting a bunch of websites and watching a lot of videos on the web, that I needed an outer jig to build the body. The first step now is to smoothen the flamed maple pieces that will form the sides, cutting them to length and bending them on a bending iron using water and heat to pursuade the wood in it's curved shape. I am contemplating to make the point protectors (usually made of bone or ivoroid) out of indonesian ebony; we'll see.

The building of the jig wasn't easy. I thought it would be easy, so that was the hard part. I find that overcoming my impatience is the hardest thing of building, because I am used to press a button and make stuff happen at once; woodworking is a whole different ballgame. First I layered two pieces of multiplex and screwed them together to get the thickness of the body. Then I traced the contour of the body from the drawing, and traced that on the multiplex.

I then tried to saw out the shape using a jigsaw: mistake. In the corners I applied too much pressure to get through the bend, causing the sawblade to saw at an angle instead of straight through, cutting away too much. As this persisted, the sawblade heated up and burned the wood. Badness overall. So I got a bright idea to drill holes around the edge so they would be dead straight, and then saw and cut out the remains; this worked perfectly. I ruined a good piece of multiplex in my first attempt, but my second attempt worked fine. Behold the result! The cool part is that I can reuse the jig as many times I like! And I think it's easier to form the outer body wall in a jig; as I had worked out from the videos.