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.