As I am still working mostly in evenings, I use limited time to work on my project, rather to take too much pictures. So, I would say, more shop, less talk.
Anyway, there was some progress, but also some mistakes.
Since the last post, I made a 45ish degree chamfer all around the body. And there lies a first mistake, as I didn't count on tailpiece requiring a square edge. So, I had to glue in a piece of mahogany and re-create a square edge for tailpiece to lean onto.
Next I drilled the cavities for pickup and control plate. For pickup I went with dual rail humbucker (Peacemaker from Warman Guitars) and Telecaster control plate (volume, tone and 3-way switch). Needless to say, my heart sunk to my ankles when I started to drill the holes in the body, especially for the control plate, as I had to go 1-3/8" deep for the 3-way switch on the 1-9/16" thick body. I was just waiting fot the tip of the Forstner bit to show up on the back. Fortunatelly, it hasn't.
And a test, to see how all fits together:
Next, I glued in the neck. Since I was a bit worried about the strenght of the joint, due to the small neck pocket and small glueing surface area, I opted for the extra strong, 90 min epoxy glue.
And finally, glued up and sanded all the way to P320, ready to be oiled:
Here is the picture of the control plate, ready to be installed in the near future:
I opted for 3 way switch to have serial/split/parallel options for the single humbucker pickup.
Next in the plan is to oil the mandolin with several layers of Danish oil, finalize the scratch plate with pickup and to start working on bridge and nut.
just a few notes and pictures of the progress over the last few weeks!
I went with 3 layers of Rustins Danish oil, followed by a coat of wallnut wax. First layer of Danish oil was rubbed in with cloth, as long as the wood didn't take in more oil and after few minutes I wiped off the excess oil. Second layer was rubbed in with 400 grit sanding fleece and third with 600 grit sanding fleece. After third layer, I left it around 24 hours to fully dry, before rubbing in the wax.
Pickup and control cavities were shielded with self-adhesive copper tape and I created 2 ground points, one in pickup cavity, one in control cavity, by screwing in two small screws and connecting them with a wire. From the control cavity ground point I ran a wire, grounding the tailpiece.
The dual rail humbucker pickup is wired to the 3-way switch so that I have 3 voices from a single humbucker, series, split and parallel. I did the screwdriver test to see if everything is wired correctly, and so far so good.
The pickguard is made out of aircraft grade 2 mm plywood, stained with a light mahogany stain and finished with wallnut wax. It turned out more reddish than brownish, but it adds a nice contrast to the top of the instrument.
Only thing that remains is to make a bridge and a nut and put the strings on. Bridge will be made out of ebony, nut from the camel bone and strings will be Jim Dunlop Americana nickel would 11-40.
yes, I was anxious to put the strings on and play it. Bear in mind that I have never held or played a mandolin before, nor acoustic, nor electric.
After making a compensated bridge out of ebony and spalted maple, I put on the strings, tuned the instrument and played a few notes. To my untrained and unexpierienced ear it sounds fantastic. It amazes me that I managed to build a fully functional instrument without any prior knowledge. Of course, info that I got from this forum helped a lot.
After putting on the strings, some rookie errors have been highlighted.
1. Headstock - Headstock is too thick for the ukulele tuners that I installed, so I am getting only one full would under the luthier's knot on the 40 size G string
2. Nut - it pays out to have a nice set of nut files, I just got 10, 13, 24 and 35, which are too thin for the strings I have (11/40 nickel wound Dunlops)
3. Frets - I installed frets with 0.025" crown height, so I had to make the fretboard really flat before installing the frets, as any subsequent fret leveling would be tough
After filing the slots on the nut, strings were too wide for the slots and I managed to break both E strings while re-tuning. They are stuck in the nut slot and they break at the post. I will simply go with the appropriate string gauges for the nut files that I have. This shoold also mitigate the problem of the too thick headstock.
After playing each string at each fret I got some fret buzz, mainly on the first fret of the G string. Second fret is a bit too high, so I will gove it a love tap with the hammer. Also, smaller string gauges could overcome this.
Neck was fully straight, without any relief, so I loosen the nut on the one-way truss rod, re-tuned and left it over night. In the morning the nut was tight again and I saw some relief on the neck.
Today is the new day and there is still much to play on the nut, to get everything perfectly balanced.
I will play a bit over the next few days and post a video on the weekend!
Re: Newbie Builds an Electric Mandolin
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