Thursday, July 30, 2009

Mandolin Project Post 2

The following set of pics will show a bit more in the neck and head forming . In the last post , I had the " Ears gluing up on the headstock , as you can see below the finished blank looks more like a mandolin neck . I used my layout pattern and did my cutting in my band saw.






You can see in the following 2 pictures the basic shape prior to cutting the tang to fit it into the body and shaping the back of the neck .



In the next picture I have cut the body tang and have shaped the unit a bit . During the time I was working on the unit at I received the tuners I had ordered fro Stewart MacDonald and came to the realization that my head stock was to short ( mistake 1 in a long list)So after shaping the neck you can see I added a " Crown " at the top of the headstock made from Hard Maple and glued in .



The next procedure is to make the slot for the Tension Rod in the neck . The point of this is to help keep the neck from warping when the strings are tuned , it has an arrow shape with a nut at the headstock end that can be tightened or loosened to adjust the neck as needed.



I f you look on my work bench just above the neck you will see the Tension rod laying there . I fitted it by hand and the grove isn't really that well done ( mistake 2 ) Next time I will design my neck blocks so that the grove is already accounted for when gluing up the neck blank .


After the tension rod is set , the top part of the neck is then refilled with a Hard Maple strip and re glued into place . This creates a hollow square hole that allows for slight bending to set the tension. The center of the tension rod is wrapped with electricians tape to keep it from ever rattling during playing of the instrument. Sort of a sound deaden'er.


That gives you a basic and short idea of the work involved in making a mandolin neck .


I have another picture I will share now . I will make it a contest to see who can tell me what the following contraption is put together to accomplish . Please Leave your Guesses in comments.









3 comments:

Karen Deborah said...

wow I am impressed! Can you play the mandolin?

WudWerkr said...

actually no , i know a few chords , but as for playing . no i cant. my joy is building.

Heidi said...

Oh I seriously think you need to learn how to play !~~~~ its going to be great!!!