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I don't know much about the subject but when I saw the video of Roger hammering the tonebars of a mandolin with the top attached to the sides I thought to myself that can't be how Gibson did it since...

I just skimmed the article yesterday, but took away a few things that I already knew - sorta. At one point, I did interferometry and a few other things on a 1921 (?) Calace that Mike Schroeder had...

Roughly 25 yrs ago, I went to the Atlanta College of Art and after 4 years I received a Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts with a Concentration in Sculpture. It's where I learned the basics of...

I've installed K&K and JJB piezoelectric soundboard transducers in quite a few instruments, including violins, violas and f-hole mandolins.

There are some differences between installations in a...

A friend of mine owns one. It's a beauty, and he's very happy with it. I've played it, and it's superb.

#1= operator error!

If you're doing it for your own use you don't have to be as efficient. You can simply do something else while the CNC slowly cuts the slots and you can have the luxury of dead ends. But making it for...

I have to agree with Dagger on these points.

Octave mando is lovely to play at home or in a small group setting, but is very easily lost in the mid-range at a pub session, especially if there are...

One of the great gentlemen of the stringed instrument world. Rest in peace, Frank.

I like it. Also like your nice collection of instruments.

I don't want to get too snarky here, but; who is building the mandolin? If the builder likes sugar maple and thinks he/she can get you the sound you want using it, what difference does it make what...

Yes sir.

The Oberlin Summer Acoustics workshops are the most numerically nerdy event that I have attended. All week is spent measuring and calculating everything possible. Most of the better...

There are a few things about "stiffness" that always seem to get glossed over. What's somewhat discouraging about this is that the information is not new; it's been around - and available - for a...

I've pretty consistently thinned my sides to ~0.070 (~1.8 mm), which is in the ballpark of what everyone else here is reporting. I want the lower mass that goes with thinner sides.

Still, there...

Many years ago the discussion came up at the shop of my former employer. As we worked on instruments one day we asked ourselves; 'what is a "master" luthier?'
As one can imagine, the discussion was...

To each their own. Seems a bit self-contradictory though, in that you start by asking "What effects sound?", and now say in essence that you don't need anything more complicated than tapping your...

I’ll go ahead and put the target on my back. I use varnish because of the sound. Fire away.

I don't know about the article alluded to by the OP. Since it was not published in a peer-reviewed journal, I wouldn't know where to start looking for it. My work on mandolins began in 1999, which...

Every builder will do different things with the same materials; a specific wood or board often means nothing in another's hands. I've built out of dozens of other materials over the last 4 decades....

I got to thinking that I didn't make something clear enough for the OP. As sunburst pointed out, the lowest normal mode in plucked string instruments is somewhat like what people think of as a...

It seems like no matter what suggestions folks in this thread are making, the original poster is not satisfied. You are asking for definitive answers to a problem that only exists in your own head....

Because wood has different amounts of movement in different directions (more movement tangentially, less movement radially and essentially none longitudinally) wood workers are taught to avoid...

Update time

There are now 20 ribs on the mould. We have turned the corner to coin a phrase. The centre back of the bowl is relatively flat and the bowl then rises steeply. this transition occurs...

Some photos of an F mandolin (in the white) bound in wood. The fretboard is single-bound in 0.060" curly maple. The headstock and pick guard are single-bound in 0.040" curly maple. The body is...

End of Day 3. There are now six ribs fitted to the mould.. The basic process is to bend the ribs to shape, then mark out the widths. The rib widths are determined by dividing a sector of the mould...