Search:

I am a young builder.......but a very respected building mentor told me once if you want the best pieces to use for tone bars, you cant just cut a couple out of one piece of wood or only order 2. To...

Funny story........When I was moving from Guam back to the US, the movers didn't have anymore packing material left and I didnt want it to get delayed, so I put my Martin case in a larger box and...

Are you wanting to play it or have it retain it' Eastman-ness"? I would consider buying a different tailpiece...I have tried good cast ones and like them, but i can tell you from experience Bill...

I am a newish builder, but I do the frets first before gluing it on.....particularly because I dont want to press or hammer frets and risk the instrument taking the stress, especially if you have an...

My first couple mandolins had little tone and were twangy, mostly due to my nervousness about carving the back and tops correctly. I left them way too thick. I read Siminoff's suggestion about...

James is an absolute wealth of knowledge. Just one example.......I have struggled with tonebars for some time. Some great advice I got from him was to build a bunch of them, play with them and see...

Kdird....If you are interested in some good mandolin music to play that can sorta be bluegrassy, David Grisman is the man. His "dawg" music is like a mixture of bluegrass, folk, jazz and even some...

I have restored a few mandolins and guitars. Golden Age/Restoration tuners work quite well, look the era and you can always throw the original in a ziploc bag in the case if you really want to keep...

Im not a well seasoned builder here....but the best advice I got was just keep on bending until you get the feel and process down. First F had quite a pile of broken pieces on the floor, but once I...

You certainly picked the right guy to learn from!!

I have restored 3 early Gibson A's and so far ('16-'23) I have used the Golden Age restoration tuners on all of them. Other than sending one set back for damage, all of them fit, operate and hold a...

I have '23 A Junior that I restored (got it in 4 pieces) The machines were more than pretty sloppy....Like you I didn't want to taint it with replacement ones. However, I also wanted to play it. I...

i was literaly singing the song as i read it! That was pretty good!

j.condino said it......I travel with a mandolin nearly twice a month, never thought of making it any smaller.

J. Condino said it........I bring a mandolin on work trips nearly twice a month......never thought of making it any smaller.

I had a similar thing happen to mandolin no.1, I heard a very uncomfortable crack and then found the saddle in two pieces......parted like the red sea.....except with a crack. I had made the saddle...

One of the nicest mandolins I have is a 1923 Gibson A that came to me in 5 pieces. To RCC56's point, this instrument took me from "aspiring luthier" all the way to "more experienced aspiring...

the pic of the front was the trial bridge....very poor spacing. I have a new one going on soon after I re-do the frets that i goofed up.

196203196204196205Sorry for the confusion, here they are for real!

Here it is

Last year I embarked on a journey to learn how to build mandolins. This past week, I finished my first mandolin and am right proud of it. However, I didn't get here by myself. James Condino...

Same here....I have a bunch of small jars with different wood dust in them to make my own filler. I have even been known to take card scraper shavings (when I do a lot of it on one piece) and put it...

I experimented with true-oil on a resonator guitar that I built a couple years ago and really liked it. I am partial to low gloss finishes and especially oils but they are hard to layer and build up...

I appreciate all the advice.....will most definitely be building up the wood and reshaping the dovetail correctly. May reach out some more as I’ll probably need help along the way! Thanks again and...

Bill,
i just didn't think that gluing more wood onto it would be stable enough. How would one go about grafting new wood to it?