Moving on to Neapolitan mandolins which are at least a bit more familiar to me, this Vinaccia recently came in looking all nice and minty, but with one top brace short of a pair, and the other badly repaired with something all sticky and gummy. A badly distorted top too.
I know some of the bowl-heads around here like to see how these are constructed so I hope you'll all indulge me here...
Sadly, no real choice but to pull the top:
That actually shows the "good" side - the other side of the brace was covered in the sticky stuff - thankfully it did all come apart and clean up OK.
Notice though the chunk missing from the brace where a knot was: Vinaccia might be first family of mandolins, but they were clearly happy to use a bit of "funky" wood in there!
Here's the label for posterity:
Bookmarks