Shaping the Peghead

Sunday, May 10, 2009.

Well, yet again, a setback. Looks like I am going to be starting on my third soundboard for this first mandolin.

If it didn’t hurt so much, it would be funny. Ah, but them’s the breaks.

As I was working on roughing and then smoothing this second soundboard, I noticed that the glue joint in the center was remarkably noticeable. At first, I made myself believe that this was simply the glue near the edges and that, as I carved and sanded, it would disappear. Then as I went on, I decided it was just the coloring of the glue since this is a different batch than I used on the first soundboard. Finally, as I began working on getting the thickness graduations uniform, I held it up the a light bulb and noticed some gaps. Dangit. My best guess is that even though I went to lengths to get the mating surfaces flat and parallel, I probably put too much glue on and then didn’t get clamped up well enough (three of my four clamps are old ones that give me fits - I replaced them this weekend).

So - I have my third set of soundboard lumber on order and I am awaiting its arrival. For this effort, I am going to get myself a squirt-bottle for the glue, make sure to apply only as much as I need, and then clamp it using my new clamps. If this doesn’t work.....

Aside from that, I got to work on the neck and peghead some more this week. For this go, I managed to cut the peghead to shape. If you haven’t looked into building an F-style mandolin before one of the features you may not have noticed is that the edges of the peghead are cut perpendicular to the face of the fretboard rather than the peghead. This means that while cutting, the pehead has to be held at an angle so that the fretboard is parallel to the bandsaw table.

Obviously another jig is required!

One of the few things that is not very clear in Mr. Siminoff’s book is just how to make this jig. Yes, he mentions it and shows a picture of his jig with a peghead clamped to it, but the picture doesn’t show much and he chooses not to go into detail about its design. So once again I turned to the folks at the Mandolin Cafe and was able to get several suggestions and pictures of the jigs that some of those guys use. From that, not only did I find that this can be a VERY simple jig but I was able to use one of the pictures as my guide and got-‘er-done.



All it is, is a simple wedge with a notch on each side to allow for a clamp. The corners are rounded off a bit to keep it from getting in the way while cutting.

Here I am actually in the process of cutting the peghead.




These show how I used a 2” spring clamp to hold the peghead to the jig and the clearances I have all the way around. The last photo shows how the fret board is held parallel to the top of the workbench.



In these pictures you can get a better look at the peghead itself now that it is cut. You should be able to see that the cut lines are not perpendicular to the peghead but are to the fretboard.

And this photo shows the back of the peghead after I sanded it down to make the peghead and veneer blend into the neck.

Finally, I finished the week by practicing carving a scroll on the second soundboard.

I think it looks pretty good.

Next week, if my new wood arrives, I will start again on the soundboard, but in the mean time I intend to get started bending some wood and building my new sides.

Carving the Replacement Soundboard

Monday, May 4, 2009.

Not a lot got done in the last week, but enough I guess to still say I am moving ahead even if much of it was put in to remaking the soundboard.

I started the week by removing the clamps from the peghead where I had glued the front veneer and then gluing on the back veneer. The front veneer is ebony wood and the back is simply a thin maple.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that virtually no glue got into the truss rod pocket so that little mistake didn't end up hurting.


Then I moved on to the soundboard. Unlike the original soundboard, the raw wood for this one came in a bit warped which made it a bit more difficult to glue up and then made it a lot more important to plane flat before starting to carve. This is not really a straight forward thing to do when your would is not flat on both sides but rather wedge shaped. Obviously, a method must be found to allow the wedged side to face down while feeding it through the power-planer. For this, I remembered reading that Lynn Dudenbostel uses a couple of strips of wood as supports - so I thought I would try it.

I dug out a long, thin piece of scrap wood that shipped as a stiffener with something else (I can’t remember what), cut it in half, and glued it onto the spruce blank.


Knowing that the areas where the glue is applied (pretty much only under the clamps) is going to be carved away anyway and that the strips themselves are nothing more than scrap, I figured the gluing was a pretty good method for making sure the strips stayed in the same location from one pass to the next. Seems I was right.


Once I had the one side nice and flat and my outline drawn on, it was time to carve. Here is where I am as of now.


As you might notice, unlike the first soundboard, I have begun carving the scroll as well as the body on this one. I decided to abandon the idea of carving the ivy leaves on the scroll as I had originally planned and go forward with a traditional scroll. I made this choice because I am finding that this project is challenging enough without this additional feature. I will, however, go ahead with the inlay as I had previously planned.

Installing the Peghead Veneer

Sunday, April 26, 2009.

Yesterday I got a few honey-do list projects done and then got to spend a little time prepping and gluing the new soundboard together. I chose not to include pictures of that since they would be of little difference than the ones I posted for the first. That was about all I got done on Saturday.

Today, while the soundboard glue continues to cure, I took to the task of gluing my peghead veneer onto the peghead. Since, once the instrument is completed, the veneer will be butted directly against the nut and, since the nut is perpendicular to the fretboard rather than the peghead, the first step in this process is to prep one edge of the veneer to the angle of the nut.

I had done this a couple of weeks ago using a drawing from Mr. Siminoff’s book, so all I had to do today was to verify the angle still looked good to me. Holding against the peghead as if glued on, the angle of the edge appears to be perpendicular to the fretboard as it should be. Looks good.

On to the next step - sanding the peghead smooth to make it ready for gluing.

As you may recall, the last thing that I did on the neck and peghead was to install the circular scroll reinforcement. When I put the neck aside, I had not sanded down the reinforcement. So that is what I did. Since the reinforcement still protruded quite a bit, I started by using my hand-plane to remove the majority of the protrusion. Once it was close to level, I switched over to sanding with 320 grit paper on my orbital palm sander. This process only took a few minutes and now, with a silky smooth surface on which to glue, I was ready to get back to work on the veneer.

I started by match-marking the centerline on the nut and point edges of the veneer to match those on the peghead. Now that I had my reference points, I was ready to mark the outline of the peghead onto the veneer using my pattern and a mechanical pencil.


That completed, I retraced the same pattern onto the peghead itself.


With matching patterns on the peghead and the veneer, I was able to lay the veneer on the peghead, verify they lined up, and then clamp them in place so I could drill for alignment pins.

The alignment pins are nothing more than finishing nails with their heads cut off that are located in the “junk” area of the peghead blank. By putting them in during the gluing process, I am assured that the veneer will align exactly where I want it, without slipping, while clamping and the glue setting. I cut off the heads of the nails so that the gluing caul (a 3/4” piece of plywood) would push them flush with the veneer without interfering with the clamping itself.

After cutting out a hole to roughly match the truss rod pocket, I was ready to glue.

Once again using hide-glue, I liberally applied the glue and clamped up.


After taking these shots, I also added one more clamp right over the truss rod pocket.

MISTAKE (I stopped counting) - Just after I had applied my glue and started clamping, I realized I had not cut a hole in my gluing caul over the truss rod pocket. This hole would have allowed me to clear out any glue that oozed into the truss rod pocket. Now, I will have to wait until the assembly is dry and chip/sand/scrape the glue out. Not too bad (I hope), but still a pain nonetheless.