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I am building an archtop mandocello (A style) and I'm trying to find out how to make the neck block. It would be more or less like an A style mandolin neck block, but obviously quite a lot bigger. More or less like the image attached. The blank should be aprox 10 x 8 x 12 cm. I'm trying to find a piece of hardwood big enough for this, would it be acceptable if I made some kind of laminated piece? And how should the grain direction be idea…

LOOTHTOOL I've made some purchases on LOOTHTOOL, but it will not let me review. SO, the VL’s Precision Feeler Gauge Set is a rock solid 10 of 10 or five Amazon stars. Nice blades, EXCELLENT tool box, well marked, I'm thrilled!

The sub menu is back by both popular and reasonable demand.

So it seems that a drum sander would be very handy for many parts of a "build from scratch". There are a few out there that cost under $3000.00 that can handle wood up to 4" thick and are wide enough to sand a back or top after the halves have been joined. Jet JWD-22-44 open stand, 22"width Jet JWDS-2550 open stand, 25" width SuperMax 19-38 opend stand, 19" width SuperMas 25-50 closed stand, 25" width Questions: Any recomendations on the sa…

(for background context, I'm probably in the dozens of fret jobs so far, and no I don't let frets leave my house like this) When I got started getting interested in building guitars, I got the StewMac bundle of fret files/book, which comes with the concave toothed file. Over time, I ended up getting both the Narrow/Medium and Wide/Jumbo files. I don't do it often, but occasionally I do something like shown in the picture, where I'm clearl…

Looking for the resource page that had all the links on it. Along with the Amazon suggestion lists from various luthiers

Please, if you see something, say something. If you want something, ask. Bugs, wishlists etc. Stack them up here.

Good morning everyone, I was taking some measurement on production necks with scarf-joint (13° headstock angle) to add some machining process with the cnc. I so recreated the standard neck blank feature (100mm wide and 20mm thick), then drawed the 13° angle. Everything correspond the to the real piace but two measurement: the startingcut behind the break angle is ''off'' by 20mm +/- as well as the cut on the bottom, still off by 20mm…

I don't have a piece of mahogany that is wide enopugh to make the heel block on a dreadnaught guitar. Would black limba make a good heel block? I have a piece of black limbaquarter sawn and 5 inches wide.

Just posted a full build video for the last mandolin batch over on YouTube. Give it a watch folks, its 25 mins long. And there should be a few woodworking tips there for some of you, and some lovely tunes all played on my work.

Let me start with this; I'm trying to find the root cause of difficult fret wire installation of two different SM fret wires. I've spent a lot of time gathering dimensions and experimenting with techniques wich could cause the problem. I enlisted the help of a colleague who arrived at a similar poor performance. His solution was to glue the fret ends/ beat the frets in. My "rather" is to find the root cause so I don't have to go thr…

Dialled in the Beta, much further. Now at v1.1.0 Echoing Christopher Alexander’s argument in the first half of “Notes on the Synthesis of Form” here. Parametric, Semi-Lattice Structures. Centres within Centres, interacting to form the whole. A living structure. Because of the dimension of time, and feature hierarchy, and methodology we end up with a Centre Oriented Semi-lattice Hyper-graph, or COSH for short. This will be available on the…

I'm using hide glue on this 1st build. So far I've glued up the kerfing, back braces, and the top "X" brace. I'm using the 190 grade glue. Working time is short at best. I heated the top "X" brace surfaces (brace & top) with a blow dryer and that seemed to help, a little. How can I get enough working time to glue the top, and then later the back, without having to rush and creating a real mess in the process? Suggestions and reco…