Two mandolins

I still hand plane most of the wood. I was lots of pleasure to use my new hand built Krenov style smoother:





The top and back glued with the wedge and rope method:



The tops are left overs from previous instruments. They are both Sitka spruce AA-graded. The backs and sides are Sapele.

The sides were bent on the hot pipe. Here they are in the mould after initial bending:

Hi lars,
Thanks for posting this thread- I feel really guilty about my workshop now; I’ll have to tidy up! Looks like a great space to create in.
It will be interesting to hear the difference between the two mandolin.
I like your Krenov planes, I’ve got his cabinet making books that I bought back in the late 70’s. Funny, I’ve been looking at his planes again recently, along with Japanese ones; I’m gradually collecting the parts to make a round bottom one for my archtops.
Look forward to seeing the rest of the build.
Cheers Gary

The tops are cut to make room for the neck extension (and routed for an exact depth):



And on to work with the necks. First rough saw and plane the African mahogany neck blanks and the cut the blanks in 15 degrees angle:


Plane and sand the cut surfaces and reglue the necks:


I omitted truss rods, but installed carbon fibre rods and glued a mahogany cap above;


The heels were added and neck angle decided. This was a different angle for the two instruments, since they have different top radiuses.


The place for the bolt was marked and drilled and a threaded insert was screwed and epoxy glued. This is what the heel and neck extension looks like when it's near completion:


After a lot of test fittings with carving and filing in-between I got a correct alignment between body and neck. This may be the most complicated part of the whole building process. You need exact angles in both horizontal and vertical directions and you need a good fit between heel and body. 

And back to the necks:

They are roughly cut to thickness:


And "wings" are added to the heads:


I had lots of thoughts before I could decide for the head veneer. I wanted the two mandolins to be very similar but still recognizable from each other. I ended up with this:



Which turned out to look like this:


For the first time I used my StewMac jig to get exact placement for the tuners:

Planing ebony by hand is hard, even with a real sharp planer. Here I had to use a steel plane as I needed the weight:


For the first time I used a fret template.


The slotted fretboard getting prepared for a radius:


Sanding with a radius block until the chalk marks disappear:


Compensating the radius by deepening the slots, so they are equally deep all along:




Apparently I forgot to take pictures when I pressed the frets with the help of a fret caul applied to my drill press. But here is one of the fretboards glued to the neck:


And time for the best part of the building process - shaping the neck!:

This is mainly done with a carving knife, followed up by rasp and file.


Here are what the mandolins looked like around Christmas (as you can guess from the table cloth):


The frets get dressed and polished:


The back and sides are pore filled with egg white:

This was made three times with sanding back to the wood between the layers.

And finally I could begin with the finish. First two layers of schellack. And then I planned to make an oil finish with Liberon finishing oil, but the content in the can had turned stone hard. Instead of ordering a new can I decided to try Osmo hard wax oil. This is after the first layer:



And after four layers it starts to look glossy:


And this is it for now. I'll let the oil harden for about a week. Then I'll polish it with micro mesh pads. The lasts steps include assembling the instruments ,make bridges and nuts and tp put on tuners and tail pieces and string them up.
Until then...

Thank you, Keith!
I know that I've promised sound clips before and not delivered. But now I've bought a new audio interface and a new recording mic, so I really have the intention to record them. If it doesn't sound too shabby I'll share it with you!