Guitar shaped mandolin - "Celtic Tigger"

Over the years I have done a number of "re-birthings" of instruments I made in the early part of my "building cycle" - many of which I have documented here - and this is another one but with a twist. In the early 2000's I was working in Dublin at the time of the "Celtic Tiger" boom and shortly after that started my new "job" as a stringed instrument maker. The sixth instrument I made in 2004 was born out of my time in Ireland and the concept was a small portable instrument with red in its colour scheme that could be used to play Irish/Celtic music and to be called "Celtic Tigger". It was a travel guitar-bouzouki with 605mm scale length, sixteen frets clear of the body and had Padauk for its back and sides:





This instrument worked vary well and has made a lot of great music with many people and it's final time was spent with leoroberts. Unfortunately Padauk starts off red but turns a chestnut brown colour over time when exposed to light, and the back ended up cracking as well:



In April this year I picked "Celtic Tigger" up from Leo when I dropped off his new mandolin and pondered what to do. Over the last year I have been discussing the concept of a guitar bodied flat top mandolin with my mando partner at the Folk Club Peter and the "Celtic Tigger" body shape fitted this "cunning plan" - it is the same body shape as my Piccolo guitar too - as well as the concept of a small portable instrument suited to playing Celtic style music. So I decided to use the name and serial number for this new project - "Celtic Tigger", Serial No 6. There was not much in the way of parts from the original that I could use for the new model apart from the carbon fibre bars in the neck but lots of other parts from the original instrument will get suitably re-used. What was needed was the red wood and I had a small set of Bubinga left over from the flitch that was used on my "Buachaill Mor" guitar and "Ceol Binn" mandolin - perfect. I also had a birdseye maple mandolin neck blank left over from making a banjo neck. The top had to be "Lawson's Cypress" from my "Magical Musical Tree" and the rest would come from other bits and pieces of wood I could find that were appropriate. I also decided that the mandolin should have a cutaway.

This build thread will be different in that I'll show you the finished instrument first and then take you through how it was made. So here's the new "Celtic Tigger":







It also fits in a Hiscox mandolin case:



So the details are 375mm scale length with 36mm wide nut. Lason's Cypress four piece top and fretboard side/inlay markers; Bubinga back and sides; Birdseye Maple neck; Macassar Ebony fretboard, bridge, headstock veneers, bindings, end-graft, heel-cap and armrest; Bubinga recessed rosette; black/ pear/ black purflings; Gotoh mandolin tuners with black buttons; Gold EVO frets; Brass tailpiece for ball end strings; K&K twinspot pickup with gold strapnut.