SO the mando sold on Ebay, so I have some pennies in the kitty to buy some new parts for later builds..... I have my eye on a fanned fret acoustic guitar, but it'll have to wait, because of the interest generated by the sale of the mando on Ebay. I have 4 negociated commissions and another guy thinking about it. No deposits yet, and of course, with the credit crunch there's every possibility that some (or all) of them may cancel, but still, looks like a busy few months ahead.

The 3 builds that are pretty much agreed are a guitar shaped bouzouki in Rosewood, a mando based on a Gobson Dove acoustic and a A4 style mando.

for each I'm going to have to make new moulds and as a mould is just some MDF or ply sheet I decided to get the A4 under way, even though there's no formal agreement yet......

My technique is to find a straight on pic from the net and using a data projector, throw the image onto a screen. zoom until the scale is right, then draw round it and cut it out. 6this is a 1906 Gibson A4





then cut out the mould from MDF. as a mando is so thin it only needs one thickness of 25mm sheet. guitars need a thicker mould.

once they're cut I clamp them together and sand them smooth on the inside to ensure symetry.


here are the unbent mahogany sides



and now bent & clamped to allow the wood to dry again overnight. note the neck & tail blocks to the left.