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No, too much risk of finish damage, and also not needed. Sometimes they have to be left in the torture rack until they respond, but usually they just push back reasonably well into place. With my...

Hi Andrew. I'm a big admirer of your work. Thanks for the tip on the flat surface. I'm planning to make a binding router jig similar to yours when I finally get to that stage so I'm sure having...

Larry Smart is making some of the best mandolins available out there. And unlike some of his more elusive brethren, he is happily taking orders and the wait is not years and years.

I’m a big and vocal proponent of both builders, particularly if you like your new mandolins to look and sound old, but each will struggle to break into this list for the same reason: limited output....

Beautiful Graham.

I wish more people understood and accepted the zero fret!

Local persimmon:

Yours is quite a bit simpler than this one because you only have to deal with the surface veneer and not the whole side thickness like this one.
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Agreed, but I don't attempt to keep them perfectly flat. It's sort of like the grill of a Rolls Royce. The slight crown, rather than dead flat, Keeps it from looking concave. There is also that...

For getting at some things where a clamp won’t work, I had been looking for a tiny version of a ‘lab jack’, that is a scissor jack, and of course SM sells one that costs far more than my first car. ...

Kevin's link leads to some info, but nothing specific.
My usual method is to put little crescent-moon-shaped spacers under the binding toward the "humps" of the upper and lower bout. They're about...

Medullary rays are present in the wood regardless of whether they are visible at the surface or not, ray fleck is the figure at the surface of the wood caused by exposure of medullary rays. So, no...

I use hex nuts as suggested by David Cohen, and an interlocking beam that allows the moving top part of the bridge to be taller than normal. Taller means stiffer, in addition to preventing the...

I had a mandolin in the shop once for a set-up. The strings at the 15th fret were almost 1/4 off the fretboard. The owner said the higher action made it louder. I set it up like normal and lowered...

BTW, this test was provoked by seeing pics / videos of bent mandolin ribs by some manufacturers/builders that appear to be insanely thick (some appear to be 3+mm or 1/8") yet the bends are perfectly...

IMO there is no noticeable tone difference between varnish or lacquer. Some of the best sounding Gibson mandolins are the ferns from the 20's and they are lacquer. Also, all of R.L. Givens mandolins...

The thing that sucks worse than Golden Age tuners is the customer service from from Stew Mac since they sold the company to Champlain Capital and the new guys are straddled with millions in debt,...

That's what I've done any time I used wood binding on a mandolin/mandola, not necessarily with purfling.
Here's an example:

Sorry if I sent this thread sideways! Back to the original issue! I have never put wood binding on a mandolin, although I did bind my first few guitars with wood way back in the 70’s. Almost all my...

Very sorry to hear of her passing. We worked together a lot on Mandolin Magazine. She was a great teacher and advocate.

David McCarty

Ginny was wonderful to work with...patient, thorough, encouraging, and upbeat.For more than a decade Mandolin Magazine brought attention to all kinds of mandolin players and luthiers along with...

Oh no. I hadn't talked to her in some time but we had become friends, first through the magazine and then she had contacted me about building her a blue mandolin. I sent her my personal one so she...

Ginny was a personal friend and jammed at my Sunday night jams many times. She was a sweet, kind and loving woman and taught fiddle to many, many students. She enthusiastically loved sharing the...

Aside from the tailpiece not closing correctly if the angle is too low, cast or machined tailpieces (like Bill's) can impose a bending moment on the tailback and ribs in that area if they are set too...

Recon stone is a good option. Or something like Inlace, though I think it ends up having a "Woodcraft Store Demo from the 90's" vibe.

Filling a cavity with crushed/filler inlay is actually harder...

I have a massive vacuum setup that I mostly use for double basses & solidbody instruments. It gets used to re-arch collapsed tops and I also use it for much of my new build process. They don't have...