Third Soundboard Progress

Saturday, May 23, 2009.

Even though our visitors have arrived I have been able to get a fair amount done on my newest soundboard - in fact its pretty much done and ready to glue onto the new rim - carved, shaped, f-holes cut, and tone bars installed and shaped. Having carved it twice before, I found carving to go a whole lot faster now that I have a better idea what I am doing. Here is what it looks like.



You will probably notice that there is a place at the base of the soundboard that is light colored. This is a patch of maple veneer that I had to install where I got the soundboard too thin while carving. While I never broke all the way through, the spruce got paper thin and unless I was going to abandon this soundboard, too, I needed to find a way to repair it. Fortunately I had a sheet of thin maple veneer left over from where I had used some earlier on the peghead and, using hide glue, I used it to reinforce the thin spot from the inside.


Judging by the light ring after gluing, I think it should work out OK provided that the veneer doesn’t end up dampening the sound too much (if any).

I also was able to get my rim completed (the glue on the kerf lining is setting up as we speak).



And, finally, I managed to carve the scroll. I really like this.

Soundboard Repair Complete

Friday, April 24, 2009.

Well, today I got home from work excited to check out my repair joint and pat myself on the back for a job well done. I had, after all, found a way to repair the glue-joint on a "finished" arch-top mandolin. So, after dinner, I took to the task of removing my spring clips and removing my repair blocks.


Looking pretty good. Dried glue beaded up on both the top and bottom of the joint - no problem.

An after only about 3 minutes of block removal - pretty easy.

Then I started scraping and sanding.

And reality hit home.

This was not only the dried glue beaded up on the joint, but the joint itself standing out like a sore thumb. And gaps - not huge ones, not ones that go all the way through - lots of little gaps.


Clearly I can’t use this on a real mandolin - not with a big-ole line down the middle. So I guess it now becomes a wall hanging or expensive kindling. I can’t even use it in the how-a-mandolin-is-built display I want to build someday.

Oh well. I got my new top and side wood earlier this week so I plan to start remaking those parts again this weekend.

So what lessons have I learned from all this, you might ask?

First - when you think you are ready to glue two pieces of wood together, check again that they going where they should and, then, check again.

Second - once you have glued your tone bar in the "wrong" location - leave it.

Third - when you remove that wrongly located tone bar, don't try to salvage it. Carve it out. Destroy it.

Fourth - when you do decide to soak that tone bar free, order new parts. You'll need them.

And, of course (as we all already know), don’t eat the yellow snow.

Later.

Getting Ready to Repair the Soundboard

Tuesday, April 21, 2009.

So I have started with my repair of the soundboard. To begin with, I thought I would make sure to document what it looked like before the repair:

You can just see the faint crack going most of the way up the center. I would have included a picture of the outside, but there was really nothing to see in that photo - the crack was almost impossible to see with the naked eye and did not show up at all on the picture.

And here are pictures right after I managed to get it in half. To do this, I had to purchase a heat gun rather than using a hair dryer as I had planned (my wife's hair dryer puts out almost no heat at all!).


One note of caution for anyone like me who has never used one before - I purchased one of those heat guns that are sold in the wallpaper section of Lowe's - those things put out some serious heat. I actually scorched the wood a tiny bit without even trying.

Here are the repair blocks I made to glue on the inside and outside of each half. I made about 40 of them. You will notice I made a small mark on some of them - this was a visual reference I used to let me quickly find the side I sanded in preparation for gluing.


Me sanding one of the blocks. I am using 600 grit paper for this. I am hoping that is fine enough for this repair step. I also sanded the mating areas on the soundboard with 600 grit paper and wiped both down with a clean, dry rag before gluing.

And, finally, here I have clamped the repair blocks to the top of each side using hide glue and clothespins. I am only gluing the blocks on the top tonight because I was worried that if I tried to clamp on the bottom as well, something was going to get knocked out of position. I would rather take two nights to do this than mess it up by being in a hurry.



Now we wait till tomorrow night.