After countless hours of late night studying I finally
reached the tipping point and decided it was time to officially start on my
mandolin. It is quite a daunting task to
start the process of carving. There is
only so much you can read, and at some point must cut into your project. The worst case scenario I ruin a piece of
wood and have to start over. I wonder
how many sound boards Stradivarius ruined before he mastered them??
I sanded the back of the soundboard flat and planed it to
5/8 which is the starting thickness. I
also planed a scrap piece of pine to the same thickness to use as a test board
for my next step.
The finished edge of the mandolin will be .875 where it
attaches to the rim. I set my router
table up with a 3/8ths rabbit bit and made multiple cuts on my scrap piece of
pine setting the cutter up to leave a .200” lip. This will allow about the thickness of a
business card for finish sanding. The
mandolin soundboard will have to be routed upside down with the top on the router
table since the router is set up underneath the table and not overhead. The soundboard billet was slightly beveled
when I bought it, but when I planed to 5/8ths, it left a flat surface. This should be enough of a flat surface for
my router table. I am pretty confident I
can keep it from rocking.
The routing turned out great and I now have a .200 most of
the way around the soundboard. It starts where
the scroll ends and stops at the upper point. This will give me a ledge to hand
plane down to from the center to the soundboard to the outer rim. I will use my graduation templates and start
the process of graduating the top. I
look forward to using hand tools for a change.
There is less of a chance to screw up.
Not that I ever have…..gulp!
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