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.
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