Sandpaper

While we who build wooden things do get to cut and clamp, and design, and glue, mostly what we do is sand things.
The lowly and ever important sandpaper is the most used tool in all.
We glue something together, then we sand away all traces of the glue. We clamp, then we sand away the small impressions left by the clamps.
When finally all that is thought of has been done, has been cut and glued and fit and just right, then we sand all the surfaces smooth and perfect so the finish can be applied. Then we sand most of the finish back off as well. Sand, sand, sand. That's what we do most of the time.
I was working in San Diego in a boat yard when we finished with sailing about. A friend [John] came to visit. I showed him all around the boatyard where there were a couple of dozen people working, doing a couple of dozen different projects, from fiberglass repair, woodworking repair, metal fabrication, painting etc. John noticed almost everyone was sanding something. Sanding and sanding and sanding. That's what we do.

The question put to us was "does playing naked change the sound".
Answer; YES... but not in a good way. The back on the guitar or mandolin resonates along with the top, thus producing sound. When the instrument back is pressed on the body of the musician, the sound is dampened. More damping on bare skin than on a flannel shirt.
Violins, the way they are played, as well as most instruments played with a bow, are not dampened by being pressed against anything, thus the produced sound is fantastic.

Well, they don't look like much now, do they?. However, a most critical fitting has been done to all three mando's, and that is the fitting of the neck to the body. No only do the necks have to fit visually [perfectly], but the necks also must be perfectly aligned lengthwise, and have the proper neck angle as well.
Now, the necks come back off for shaping, for the fretboard to be installed, for the peghead veneers to be installed and so on.
Also next, the creation of yet another handmade jig, this time to cut the binding channel around the top where the sides join.
Building musical instruments is about as much fun as a person can have, at least with one's cloths still on.

Strings

The simple string. It can be soooooo much more than just a bit of string.
A bit of string can be a cat toy. It can hold together a present for a loved one. It can bring in a fish for dinner.
Take several strings and weave them together. Now you can hold a sail up a mast, hold the sail together, hold the mast up. Tie a stick to one end and throw it overboard from a moving boat and you can tell how fast the boat travels.
Pull a string tight and blow across it, or pluck it to make sound, or music. Put a few on a wooden box and you have a guitar of sorts.
Guitar strings have been made out of several things over the years. And have been available in this part of the world for many years. In the late sixteenth century, guitar strings were available for purchase on the road [Camino Real] from Mexico City to Santa Fe.
Guitar strings made today are very well made indeed, are cheap, and can be had from many many sources. It's a wonder then why so many guitars have old dead strings. New strings give new life to any stringed instrument, and thus, perhaps, new inspiration.

Those folks who traveled here from across the pond, who established this Thanksgiving tradition, really did have something to be thankful for. Just making it here in those sailing ships.
Today's sailing vessels, like the one pictured here, made and sailed by my wife Ruby and myself, could sail most any direction relative to the wind, could motor in no wind conditions, could supply fresh water, even hot water, ice cubes, pretty much all the things we take for granted in today's lifestyle.
No so with the sailing ships of old. No sanitation facilities, [ the bilge stank from more than seawater] no way to keep food fresh and healthy, no way to truly know where in the hell you were, no way to sail against the wind's direction.
Those pioneering folks weren't sailors, and didn't know any about the conditions if they actually did get there. Yet get here they did,, as did the Vikings long before them, as did the native people already here. I, for one, am glad they did get here, as I now am here.

That is the finished rosette. The pink abalone and the blue and red thin strips of surrounding wood will pop nicely with the finish applied.
Truss rods have arrived from a cold, but friendly Fed EX person, so it's back to the mandolin building.
It is a very exciting career, making something which will make music. Music making is an intensely personal thing for most of us. To make an instrument which helps to inspire someone to actually make music is rewarding indeed.

What is this hideous mess on the face of my guitar top? But wait, it WILL be a very cool rosette [ the decoration around the sound hole].
I could just go around the entire hole like most builders and be done with it in a few minutes [actually, a couple of hours]. But no, I seem not to be able to do the fast and simple anymore. Oh well, it keeps me off the street.
Speaking of soundholes, did you know they don't have to be in the center like you're used to seeing? Actually, they don't have to exist at all, and without a soundhole, a guitar sounds just fine, although different from it's holed cousin. The soundholes are akin to blowing across the mouth of a bottle to make a sound, and mostly the bass notes are affected and the treble notes not much at all.

WHAT in the world is THAT. An alien spider perhaps? A work of modern art, unappreciated and misunderstood by most. A bridge support?
It is another experiment in sound and strength, this time for a guitar.
While waiting for the arrival of the truss rods for the mandolin necks, I am proceeding to the next project, which is a comparison of two guitars with similar shapes and similar wood with the main difference being the bracing used on the guitar tops.
Most all guitars use a tried and true bracing system made with straight sticks. These sticks keep the top from warping under the tension of the strings, and help transmit the strings vibrations along the length of the top. While the tried and true system works great, just perhaps another system will work better. We shall see [hear].

The jig on the right is a devise used to route the neck cavity on the mandolin [left].
A HAND HELD router is used to perform this critical cut.
Many, probably most all, mandolins use a different kind of joint to attach the neck to the body. The old joint is traditional and works well. It was designed long before the advent of the great glues and wonderful hardware that we have today.
Most all of the mandolins built [copied] today also reflect the traditional design which has been in use for decades. While I suppose most people prefer, for whatever reason, the traditional looking instruments, I prefer to incorporate design and materials of the modern age which we live in now.
Does this produce a better instrument? Does this approach produce a better sounding instrument? Maybe, maybe not, but it at least will be something a little different than all those thousands, perhaps millions, of clones.
I MUST keep excited and MUST keep my passion for building instruments alive and well, and I simply can't by building clones, no matter how perfectly built they may be.

Stringed musical instruments today are better than the ones made even a few years ago. I'm not talking about the guitar one could buy at Wal-mart for $39.00, but the handcrafted instrument made by people who do it for the passion of it.
Technology isn't the reason, as the techniques used by custom builders hasn't changed much over the years. Sure factories have CNC machines to do carving and inlay and design, but the individual builder doesn't need or even want these machines. No, the reason that instruments are better now than before is the sharing of knowledge between builders. Almost all builders willingly share new ideas about sound production, about design, about a better way to attach this or that, etc, etc.
It is easier to get started building instruments now than ever, because the information on how to do it is readily available.
It's also harder to get started because the instruments must be just about perfect or they wont sell. They also must produce world class sound, and they must be artistically pleasing, or they wont sell. Buyers inspect instruments with little mirrors to inspect places not normally seen for a errant spot of glue, or a little stick not perfectly sanded. And they also bring magnifying glasses to inspect the joints with are perfect to the naked eye, but perhaps not perfect under magnification. All of this leads to instruments of really outstanding quality, and it makes the building of such worth doing.

Why, I was asked the other day, are you building three mandolins? It's because I have three hooks on which to hang them. Actually, I have four hooks, but I need one to hang up my magnifying glasses, so I have some chance of seeing what I'm doing. Even young people, if in fact a young person were to build musical instruments, would probably need to see things more clearly, as many instrument thins are small. Instrument making isn't for everyone, in fact almost no one. Many, especially the younger folks find reward only in money, and there simply isn't much money in making guitars and such. Why, you say, the damn custom guitars cost thousands of dollars, surly a maker is getting rich. It costs much for quality materials. An average for one of my acoustic guitars for material alone is about $1600. And while an artist doesn't count hours to complete a project, it takes 250-350 hrs to complete a guitar.

This is a picture of a mandolin top without the tone bars, and without the rim, and one with tone bars and rim.
What are tone bars, you wonder?
Well, the two little sticks do a few good things. First, they reinforce the tops strength, which is necessary to keep the strings from pushing the top down flat.
The little sticks also help transmit the tops vibrations through out the entire top, thus adding to the overall sound.
Another important aspect of having the little sticks is that the sticks can be shaped to alter tone, in other words, the sticks can tune the top to a specific note. That is cool for overall sound performance. And you thought they were just two little sticks.
Building guitars, and now the much smaller mandolins, one realizes just what can be done with a very small amount of material.

Experienced artists. What a difference it makes. At least when music is involved.
Many of us older farts dislike of even detest "new music". For many of us it has no beat, no taste, no substance, NO SOUL.
Some younger artists have soul, but not very many. Most older musical artist do have soul, and it makes such a difference in the experience of the listener.
Older musicians have years of playing whatever instruments it is that they play, and that certainly makes a difference to the performance.
Older musical artists also love what they do, or they would be burnt out and not playing anymore.
So these mature musicians have technical expertise and enjoy performing, but that isn't the entire equation. It's life longer lived that makes the sound something worth listening to.

Why, this looks like a VERY small guitar! But wait, it's actually a mandolin in the making, not a guitar at all.
Why would a guitar maker build a mandolin? They have too many strings, are odd looking, probably hard to play, and the cases are expensive. But they also have something else unique to only a few types of instruments, that is the wood parts, eg the top and bottom are tuned to each other. Violins are another instrument in which "plate" tuning is done.
This concept MAY be important to constructing a better sounding guitar. Tuning the "plates" of guitars may also contribute to the overall projection of sound. We shall see.
One can read about this and that all day long, but HANDS on experience is always the way to really figure something out.