Mandolin build finished
 

Finished building an F 5 this week. Maybe the hardest project I've done.

I thought it came out pretty good, but got to show it to a mandolin playing friend who raved about it. He plays in several bands and has a hard time being heard. My mandolin is loud and punchy and should go head to head with banjos.

It still needs varnish, but it plays and sounds good. Very satisfying.

Congrats, Brick. Was this a kit, or from the raw lumber? If a kit, what name brand? If from the lumber, go get a beer at the local pub and put it on my tab, pretty amazing either way.

Can't take your beer. The mandolin is a bittersweet story. It was a kit from Arches Mandolins. Very nice. Chris Baird, the Arches owner had a CNC. I think the kits were a byproduct of his custom mandolin business, in that the red spruce has some streaking and the back has some mineral deposits. Not the kind of thing that one spending $5K for a mandolin would want. So you got the parts needed fora mandolin, but still need to carve the back and sides. But the f holes and neck and headstock were CNC, which is how most all major builders and many single person luthiers are doing it.

Still. It's taken the better part of a year.

The bittersweet part is the shop was burned to the ground in a wildfire, so everything from tools to wood was lost. He had already discontinued the kits due to taking a regular job, but now may not be building for quite a while.

But my mandolin sounds great. Played it in the white for a month. I'll never think $5K is too much for an F style mandolin. The binding alone is insane. I just had to decline making another for a friend who played mine.

We want to see it ... in the white or finished.

http://[img]https://i.imgur.com/bAEpLM7.jpg[/IMG]

http://https://i.imgur.com/9wsS258.jpghttp://[img]https://i.imgur.com/bAEpLM7.jpg[/IMG]