The demise of my first kit and birth of my next build

Confession time.

The kit building saga was exciting, fraught with challenges and ultimately satisfying in the results. I played the mandolin for a while and even brought it to our Irish session, where it was well received. However, increasing tuning problems had me concerned that something was wrong. Time helped reveal the deadly problem - the mandolin was collapsing - folding on itself, if you will. Slowly but surely the top was bending right across the sound hole.

Here is a discussion on the mandolincafe.com builders forum where we talked about the problems of this instrument.

By now, the top has cracked and the mandolin is not usable as an instrument. However, it is very useful as a scratch-pad for learning and experimentation. Only recently I pulled out all of the frets and practiced re-fretting the neck. I may even end up cutting off the head stock (because I like the way it looks) and turn it into some ornament

But out of the ashes emerges a new project. I decided to build my next mandolin from scratch and not use a kit. There are several reasons for this:

1. The kit that I used, while great for a beginner, has certain parts pre-made, such as a top already attached to a pre-made sides/rim assembly, the neck was complete with a pre-ftetted finger board etc. I want to learn how to build all of the parts
2. The fact that the top was already attached to the sides was an inconvenience when it came to doing the final sound board graduation, fitting the braces and some steps.
3. I want to build a type of mandolin that is not available as a kit and use my choice of materials

And this brings me to the choice of the next build. I decided to use the plans made by Graham McDonald for a "Celtic Model". I will be following the design and build methods outlines in his book The Mandolin Project

This mandolin will have several distinctive design features:

1. Carved Adirondak Spruce top
2. Back, sides and neck made out of black walnut
3. The back will be flat but curved on a radius similar to a steel string guitar back
4. Oval hole

I am hoping for a more resonant and sweet sounding mandolin for use in Irish traditional music, as compared with my Gibson-like A-style f-hole Flatiron mandolin

Future entries will show photos that document the build and occasional notes about the experience

Complete!!

Here is the completed mandolin after ~8-9 coats of tru-oil, micromesh 6000-12000 and  buffing with Meguiar #2 polish. This is the first time I've ever used micromsh and I like it a lot, in spite of the high price. I then put a buffing foam disk (from StewMac) into my hand drill, put the hand drill in a vice and used it to polish the mandolin.

Here are some photos of the final instrument

Back to work on the finish

The water disaster in my previous (rented) house damaged tools, supplies, not to mention many personal items in the house. I have since relocated to central NJ and can finally get back to finishing the mandolin. My new goal is to complete this one by the end of the month or early Oct at the latest. There isn't much remaining.

I spent some time final-sanding the instrument - went up to 320 and spent (what I thought was) much time sanding. I found it convenient to use small hard (wood) and softer (closed cell stiff foam) blocks to hold the sanding paper. The hard block was useful on flat surfaces such as the head plate and the sides of the mandolin. The softer block conformed better to the curves of the instrument.

Next I used blue masking tape (painter's tape) to protect the entire fingerboard and as much of the binding as I could. Here is a a photo of the mandolin just before applying dye

I applied a thin coat of shellac (2-lb cut) to try and seal the wood somewhat and avoid "splotchiness". I knew I wanted to do it for the spruce top ,but ended up also using it on the rest of the maple body. I don't know if this was a good thing to do. It may prevent some of the figure (as little as exists in this kit) to pop but I did it anyway. I mixed my own shellac from flakes and dissolved them in denatured alcohol.

Dying the mandolin was a nerve-wrecking process - almost as much as the binding. Mistakes are very costly. Being a total beginner, all I could hope for was a reasonable finish job. I had practiced dying on some sample spruce and maple but still it's all very new to me and reading about it leaves a lot of unknowns , revealed only when you do the real thing with your hands.

I am using aniline dye powder (from LMII) mixed with denatured alcohol. I started with the amber and thought it was too brown for my taste. I wanted something a little more reddish and so I added small amounts of red to the mixed amber and kept on testing on wood until I got the shade I wanted. I think it was easier for me to get to this color starting with amber rather than starting with all primary colors. I mixed it well and let the dye solution sit overnight. Looking back, I think I should have strained the dye before using it because some aniline dye grains remained in the solution and eventually got on the wood. Next time.

There are some aspects to dye that I did not fully appreciate until now - must be obvious to anyone who has used dye before....

For example - the color on the wood gets darker and darker, with every swipe of the pad. In other words, it's not like paint where if you cover the surface with it, and then come back again, it will remain the same color. Here, the wood is never fully covered. You are distributing tiny dye particles suspended in alcohol. Therefore, every time you dip the pad in dye and bring it to the wood, you are adding color. On one hand this can be useful if you want darker and lighter areas. But it makes it hard to get even coloration across the instrument.

One good thing about this alcohol-based dye is that it does not raise the grain because the alcohol evaporates so fast.

The end result was a reasonably-even color over the maple and some splotchiness on the spruce, in spite of the shellac wash coat. I'm not sure what the reason is. Could be the wood. Could be that my sanding was not as good as could be. Could be that I worked the dye in for too long. However, I am not going to attempt to change it. It's time to complete the instrument and move on to the next project. I am happy with the color though.

Here are some photos of the mandolin right after dying. The tape is still on. The color is not exactly as it is in real life, due to the lighting and the camera in general but it gives the general idea.

I spent some time scraping the binding from any dye the seeped under the tape. I used an Exacto knife and worked slowly. One has to be very careful (from experience....) not to let the knife slip and scratch the instrument.... I think a simple tool can (should) be made with a blade extending out just a tiny bit to minimize the exposed edge. I'll put it on the list of things to improve in the future. Scratch repair is very difficult after the dye it on.

Today I put on two coats of Tru-Oil - my finish of choice for this mandolin. I wanted a simple and forgiving finish and I think Tru-Oil is it. My schedule is a coat in the morning and one at night when I come home from work. I use cheesecloth as a pad, rub a small amount on and wipe off any remaining oil. I want even thin coats. I plan to start rubbing the finish with 0000 steel wool after 4 coats and plan on about 10 coats total or when it looks "right".

Here are photos of the mandolin after 2 coats.

Finish will have to wait

Unfortunately I have not been able to live and work in the house for the past 3 weeks due to the water damage and ongoing (way too slow) construction to repair the place. I had to work hard to remove the rust from my parrot vise and plane that suffered damage and I need to re order all of my sandpaper. The entire stack was on the table when the ceiling collapsed under the weight of water and is not usable.

The good news though is that I AM MOVING! I just rented a house and will be relocating in June. AND that house has space for a small workshop. So things are looking up even if I have to put a stop on the mandolin work for a while

The good and the bad

The good news is that I made some more progress in my finish experiments. The bad news is that I cannot show the results....an unfortunate collapse of the ceiling above the work table, followed by steaming water gushing down obliterated the work...

However - we (the same famous "we" that the New Yorker magazine uses..) are to stay positive and so this is what I managed to do since the last posting:

Dye: I noticed that it was too hard to keep an even dye tone with my previous method. My idea of coming in and gently skimming the wood in one controlled motion (like an airplane landing and then taking off) turned out to be a poor one. It's just too hard to get good results. A better idea was to dilute the dye much more than I had. Then do the opposite of what I had originally said - namely, rub the dye into the wood continuously over and over until you get the desired coloration. I tried the method on the small remaining part of the wood sample and ended up with MUCH better results. That is good progress.

Finish: I applied about 6 coats of Tru-Oil diluted in mineral spirits. I think this works really well, even though I was not able to take it to a full polished finish. The thin coats go on easily with a rag and the lightest rubbing with 2000 grit paper knocked down any slight rough spots between coats. I like the richness of the finish as well. This is definitely what I will use on the mandolin.

When I started applying the Tru-Oil, I transferred some to a cotton pad and then applied it to the wood. That seemed very wasteful, as much of the oil remained in the pad. I wanted an easy method to transfer small amounts of oil to the wood before putting the pad down on it. I remembered that I had bought some pipets from stewmac and tried to use them to drop a little oil on the wood. It worked perfectly! These pipets are inexpensive and disposable, although they kept well between coat applications. I think I could end up using only one or two for the whole instrument.

I am going to set aside the finish experiments and move on to final sanding work

Playing with color

Spent some time this morning playing with dye colors and trying them out on some wood samples. I had gotten some guitar spruce top "rejects" to use as stain samples as well as some pieces of maple. I sanded them "through the grits" all the way up to 220 and then applied a wash coat of shellac to one piece each of maple and spruce. Sarah was most helpful in mixing colors. She has a very good sense for these types of things.

The dye is power from LMII, dissolved in denatured alcohol. The shellac-covered wood shows more defined figure and at the same time has less blotching than the bare wood. I will be applying finish to the stained woo, to see what the final effect is

In the meantime here is a photo from today's color session

in the white

Here is the mandolin "in the white". I still need to do final sanding and finish work on it, but otherwise it is functionally complete.


The tuners have been changed yet again. My first "upgrade" to Ping tuners did not yield all that much improvement. Not only did the Pings slip and and have to much play, but the edges of the string holes (in the posts) were actually sharp - sharp enough to cut and break more than one string!! I ended up ditching them and getting a set of Grover tuners from International Violin. They work perfectly and look very nice as well. I will have more close ups of the headstock and tuners once I complete the finish work