Found a battered bowlback at Goodwill

[discondor]

Created an account just for this - found a mandolin at goodwill (in quite a bad state) and am trying to determine whether it will make sense to get it restored or whether I’ll do some touching up and cleaning myself to hang it on my wall.

It looks cheaply made but it also has been through a lot by the looks of it(nor am I an expert on building mandolines..)No label only a signature on the body in lettering that looks quite modern and seems to spell Claudio Cavelli.

[DavidKOS]

I've repaired worse!

The big issue is not the back, those ribs can be reglued easily, but the action. I can't tell if the neck joint is still in good shape and if the action is OK.

[pops1]

Remember if you put new strings on it to use very light strings. Maybe a 9-32. Have fun.

[Simon DS]

Yes, I have a similar mandolin but the action is unplayable, no lee-way with bridge height and quite difficult to reset the neck.

If the action on this one is around 2mm at twelfth fret then you’re cooking.

[discondor]

I've repaired worse!

The big issue is not the back, those ribs can be reglued easily, but the action. I can't tell if the neck joint is still in good shape and if the action is OK.

Yeah the action seems ok to my untrained eye, wood around the sound worries me
a little bit raised en the decorating line along the sound hole is partially gone.

This is the fretboard from the sides:




Anyone happen to have any idea about it’s background? I’ve found similar makes and a single mention of the luthier placing it late 19th early 20th century but that hardly solid evidence ( nor does it tell me if it’s an old mandoline or an old good mandoline)

[brunello97]

Anyone happen to have any idea about it’s background? I’ve found similar makes and a single mention of the luthier placing it late 19th early 20th century but that hardly solid evidence ( nor does it tell me if it’s an old mandoline or an old good mandoline)

My guess would be Sicilian made, from one of the shops in Catania. Cavelli might have been a maker, or maybe not.
It was quite common practice to label or stamp the seller’s name on mandolins built ‘for the trade’.

This was very common both in Italy and the US and obviously now in China.

1000s of these mandolins were produced in Catania and Chicago.

Many mandolins sold with labels saying ‘Napoli’ were made in these Sicilian shops.
Not to cast any aspersions on their quality.
How many Chinese made mandolins bear the name of a southern US state or a down-homey-boy reference?

Many of these budget mandolins can be quite pleasant to play…if as folks say, the action is playable.

The recommendation to use only super light strings 09-32 is crucial.

The fret spacing on some of these can be erratic leading to rugged intonation….but they can also be just fine.

Your guess of age is probably in range.

Given the Cavelli signature in a loopy cursive I’d suggest early 20th C., likely pre ‘20s.

Fair play to you.

String it up, bring it gently to tune and let us know how it sounds.

Mick

[Richard500]

All the above, and don’t worry about the deformation around the sound hole - very common and not necessarily a predictor of worse things. Should be playable without much remediation, and unless the experts here say it’s some famous and rare item, go right ahead and touch up any cosmetics. But take a look inside with a mirror to see if the brace or braces are still adhered to the top, are missing, or broken. Have fun.

[brunello97]

.... don’t worry about the deformation around the sound hole - very common and not necessarily a predictor of worse things.

I would recommend treading lightly around this portion of Richard's otherwise sage advice....

Do you have some photos of the "deformations"?

These MOR Italian bowlbacks quite regularly suffer from an ever so slight collapse around the soundhole which can cause the neck / neck block to rotate upwards...even a small amount has disasterous effect on the playability of the mandolin.

I have seen this more times than I can count.

Embergher, for one, sometimes included small braces to either side of the soundhole to help counter this.

Embergher, CF Martin, Vinaccia and others would also add a stiffener plate between the soundhole and the neckblock.


I add both those type stiffeners to my bowlbacks now as a precautionary measure.

If good enough for LE, then good enough for me.

As ounces of prevention go, if you're going to have one, might as well have two.

They can certainly be removed by someone in 2052 or whenever.


I had a stout and hardy and favored Washburn bowl give way in that area out of the blue. XLight strings and kept in its case.


I thought it sufficiently broad-shouldered in its Chicago heritage to not need the above mentioned precautionary additions.

I was wrong.


Discondor, please try to post a few shots of the soundhole area at a low angle.

I may be fretting about nothing, but this is altogether too common a problem.


Mick

[Richard500]

Well, at least I said ‘not necessarily’ and only that because the sages here said that the last time I reported flattening and bracing that recent bowl back. On the engineering side, the rather complex stresses in that construction indicate that the top itself serves as a beam in compression opposing the pull of the strings, so that deformation at any point, fore or aft, weakens the beam appreciably, but there’s no good way (except for stripping the top off!) to measure the net effect. But that these, from the ones I’ve seen, with only transverse braces, could have been considerably more stable with one or more longitudinal ones. Can only guess that it would affect the sound in a bad way. Certainly surrounding the sound hole restores strength that the hole removes from the top, and that’s been mentioned here lately as well. It’s really an amazing structure and a good thing engineers were not involved…

[brunello97]

Well, at least I said ‘not necessarily’ and only that because the sages here said that the last time I reported flattening and bracing that recent bowl back. On the engineering side, the rather complex stresses in that construction indicate that the top itself serves as a beam in compression opposing the pull of the strings, so that deformation at any point, fore or aft, weakens the beam appreciably, but there’s no good way (except for stripping the top off!) to measure the net effect. But that these, from the ones I’ve seen, with only transverse braces, could have been considerably more stable with one or more longitudinal ones. Can only guess that it would affect the sound in a bad way. Certainly surrounding the sound hole restores strength that the hole removes from the top, and that’s been mentioned here lately as well. It’s really an amazing structure and a good thing engineers were not involved…

Ha! Great post, Richard.

I'm an architect and fascinated by the 'structure' of bowlback mandolins...well and any instrument, really.

My structural engineer colleague is turned on by them, too, but is apt to describe them in terms of shell structures with the top acting as such... in conjunction with the bowl, the top / bowl joint line and of course the neck block. The top could be isolated as working as a diaphragm.

In many Italian bowlbacks, and some American, you'll see a pronounced cross-top curvature, obviously to resist loading from the strings but would contribute something longitudinally.

Stiffening around the weak area...the soundhole....has seemed to be preferable to the types of diagonal braces one sees in F hole carved tops.

When I've added the Embergher style sides-of-the-soundhole braces I've notice no change in tone or volume.

Do they help? I want to think so, but who knows.

The reason that those adjustments are there in the first place suggests the builders knew this was a potential problem area.

Is that some of the reason why Chicago bowlbacks are a bit heftier than the Italian bowls, or the East Coast bowls bearing more Italian design influence (Vega, Favilla, Manello, et al)?


My colleague studied and worked with Frei Otto and is, of course, super interested in tensile and shell structures.

He suggests I model him bowl to test.

Sure, I can do that, but observation and intuition already tell most of the story.




You're so right. As a design and structural problem bowlbacks are endlessly fascinating.

Sebastiaan's recent postings here from his bowl-building workshop with Carlo M in Napoli only confirmed that for me.

I have a couple boat building friends who are often bugging me to get one out to play. They trip over them.


Mick