ThickShag - I'm A Musician, I'm A Programmer: Building An F5 Style Mandolin - Part 5

Sunday, April 19, 2009

I described in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 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.

Welcome back to the build! I've been away for a while again, and after bending the sides in part 4 it is time for the neck.

I made the neck out of a solid piece of flamed maple that wasn't long enough. Solution was to cut a triangular piece off where the neck slopes into the peghead. This piece was reglued to the bottom of the neck to make it slope down, and add a piece of length too. After this, I added to seperate strips of maple to the left and right of the peghead to get the appropriate width clearance. Essentially, the neck now consists of 4 pieces of flamed maple glued together. It doesn't matter, because I will be hiding everything under thin pieces of veneer. It looks quite stirdy and in it's current shape reminds me of a cricket bat.

One cricket bat ready for final shaping

Can you spot the glue lines?

Of course the neck needs further shaping, and routing of the trussrod slot down the length of the fretboard. It's about time to order the hardware I will need to complete the mandolin when finished. I decided to keep everything very basic; chrome hardware, no Waverly tuners, they cost a fortune! If I ever get the impulse I can always "upgrade" the hardware.

Oh yeah, meanwhile I bought a great acoustic guitar: a 2002 Gibson J100 Xtra. It sounds awesome, and it doesn't come with all the fancies, but I like it that way. Maybe put some bone or rosewood bridge pins in it at some point, but it already sounds killer as it is; below some pictures of my Gibsons. My Les Paul is a 1969 Deluxe model in goldtop finish, with the laminated 2 piece body, mini humbuckers and "goof-hiders" around the pickups; temporarily fixed it up with Dunlup straplock system, but kept the original strap pins.

My Gibsons.

I have the back- and the front soundboards now all glued up. It took a lot of cutting the pieces flush so they would glue nicely; awesomely tight, and when held, you can already hear the sonic quality of the woods when tapped. Now busy planing the bottoms flat so I can cut out the rough shapes and start cutting the flamed maple back and spruce top.

Flamed maple back all glued up.

Well cured german spruce top all glued up.

Also glued the first small bit of side panel to one of the support blocks. Hope to report more progression on glueing the sides and other blocks together; which will consist of a lot of measuring, adjusting and test fitting prior to glueing; we'll see.

Bottom tail fin is starting to look like something.

Looks like an F5, doesn't it?

Enjoy the photos, and stay tuned for part 6 in which I hopefully will be showing (partially) cut soundboards and some neck and sides progression.