Finishing the soundboard, cutting the apertures and gluing the tone bars

I am back at it after being sick for a week with hand foot and mouth disease.  I had blisters on my fingers and it was too painful to hold anything.  Doing better now.  I have been busy carving the inside of the soundboard.  It took quite some time since I had to stop an take measurements quite often.

The tone bars were not as hard as I thought to shape to the inside curvature of the soundboard.  I used a small plastic washer and stuck the my pencil through the center.  With the washer held against the side of the tone bar and the lead of the pencil on the tone bar, it rolls nicely along the contour of the soundboard leaving me with a pencil line.  I used a belt sander and a hand plane to sand down to the line.  It worked great and went pretty fast.

I next traced the apertures onto the soundboard.  The inside point of the aperture will be 5 7/8th of an inch from the 15th fret cross piece.  I drilled two holes at both ends to allow the scroll saw a starting spot.  I left a 1/6 or more of an inch from the line so I can sand the final shape once the instrument is assembled.

It was time to glue the tone bars in place.  I used some scrap leather to pad the top of the soundboard from the clamps.  I will let them dry 24 hours and I will be ready to glue the sound board to the rim.

Cutting the tone bars

Drilling holes for the aperture

Gluing the tone bars

Gluing the Lining

I felt ambitious this weekend and decided to glue up the rim.  I ruined two neck blocks trying to get a tight fit around the scroll area.  Lucky I have plenty of wood to use.  It was not discouraging other than I had to postpone the plan to glue twice.  The good thing about making a mistake is, you get better at making the component.  I know it will be a trial and error the whole way through, so when I do make a mistake it is expected.

I glued the rim in three stages.  In the DVD I have they make it look so easy and they do it all at once.  I decides why rush on my 1^st one.  Glad I did.  It turned out pretty good.

I also glued the lining in as well.  I had to modify the close pins a bit.  They did not open wide enough for the lining.  In my DVD the cloth pins were modified in a special way.  I now know why.  They slip off quite easy without the notch I saw them make.  I did not make the special notch.  Most of the pins worked for me but I see how a notch would help.  If I build another mandolin in the future I will notch the pins.   

The lining looks great except for about 1 inch on the back of the mandolin.  It slipped below the rim.  This is an easy fix and will chisel out the inch and replace it.  It should only take 10 or 15 minutes to fix.  Other than that, I now have a mandolin rim.