bits and pieces done........ the leopardwood 00 has the neck NEARLY fretted and the bolts which hold it on sorted, the acoustic bass has the neck sorted, fretted and bolted on, with the fingerboard glued to the top.....

All being well these two and the maple mandonaught will be all ready to spray at the same time, maybe even by the end of next week

I've also decided to put together a "how to build a mandonaught" plan ebook with the plans for a standard mandonaught, pinned bridge mando as well as ones with florentine & venetian cutaways. to to this with all the pix I'm obviously going to have to build those four mandolins, so unless a comission arrives to derail that plan, thats what'll be next on the agenda.

Thanks for looking!!

Progress made on the acoustic bass.......


binding on front & back, then a laminated neck put together. walnut core then a veneer of maple and mahogany on the outside


















then once that's all glued the headstock is cut and flipped to glue on as wings for the tuners, then the fingerboard glued on





then a load of carving to fine tune the neck/body join

so, it's the Easter break so I'm out of the workshop for two weeks.

before I left here's where I'd got to on everything.......

The acoustic bass has the top glued on. Obviously the bracing is all carved and the linings were planed down nicely first. the soundhole looks a bit small, I'm going to have to invest in a bigger circle cutter for the rosettes....... you may notice a stripe on the bass tailblock. That's because it's the offcut from the 00 neck........ waste not want not, and save the planet whil;e we're at it, right?

the leopardwood 00 has the neck 3/4 done and the binding step routed. as a change I decided to do a wider purfling strip so I cut a maple binding strip up the middle and glued it in place. when I get back after Easter I'll re rout the binding step to give a straight edge and bind with rosewood.

the mando body is pretty much done. I have to order fingerboards and truss rods for mandos so it'll be on hold til that arrives.