Amateur lutherie, Post Mortem
Some of you may remember that in February last year I was attempting to build myself an octave mandola. In the end it didn't go entirely to plan: a combination of lack of necessary tools and (more importantly) my lack of understanding and experience of how to use the once I did have resulted, after a month or two of gruelling effort, in this beastie (affectionately christened Mandola No Zero):
Now poor Zero never made it as far as being a completed instrument: before doing all the fiddly finishing work like I strung it and tuned it and it sounded, oddly enough, like a mandola.
...For about five minutes, by which point the strings were laying flat on the fretboard and strumming resulted in little more than a dull thudding sound. A couple of re-workings of the bridge later and I had begun to appreciate the catch-22 I was in: the inadequately braced soundboard was sinking under the downforce exerted by the strings, and raising the bridge only resulted in more downforce. My stopgap solution was to down-tune it by a tone from GGDDaaee to FFCCggdd, which sort of made the problem go away.
Unfortunately, with a bit of perspective brought about by a couple of weeks since all that hard work, the instrument had a host of other shortcomings:
- a miscalculation resulted in sides that weren't quite long enough to join up with the neck as intended, leaving a pair of non-flush araldite-smeared joints.
- where the neck joins the back was a horrible compromise due, once again to a mis-calculation.
- the centre-join on the back wasn't particularly neat (although as it turned out is was very strong).
- my decision to use sagittally-mounted traditional wooden tuning pegs rather than modern worm-gear tuning machines was an error - I don't care what Stradivarius did or didn't use: worm-gear tuners are simply better!
- another miscalculation had produced sound-holes that were too near the edge of the soundboard and didn't look right.
- there were various places where I'd accidentally taken chunks out of the neck while planing/chiseling etc. Wood-filler should be a last resort, not a major component of the instrument!
- and of course the soundboard was inadequately braced.
When, a short while later the tail-piece started to pull away from the end of the instrument with a series of loud bangs (had the join actually failed the tail-piece would have been catapulted at quite a speed - 8 strings, tuned up to pitch exert a total force of about 60kg**) it spelled the end for poor old Zero. Still, they say you learn more from your mistakes than from your successes.
Watch this space for more instrument-building shenanigans:
** Yes, it's a force, it should be 600N. F**k off, you pedant! :p
Now poor Zero never made it as far as being a completed instrument: before doing all the fiddly finishing work like I strung it and tuned it and it sounded, oddly enough, like a mandola.
...For about five minutes, by which point the strings were laying flat on the fretboard and strumming resulted in little more than a dull thudding sound. A couple of re-workings of the bridge later and I had begun to appreciate the catch-22 I was in: the inadequately braced soundboard was sinking under the downforce exerted by the strings, and raising the bridge only resulted in more downforce. My stopgap solution was to down-tune it by a tone from GGDDaaee to FFCCggdd, which sort of made the problem go away.
Unfortunately, with a bit of perspective brought about by a couple of weeks since all that hard work, the instrument had a host of other shortcomings:
- a miscalculation resulted in sides that weren't quite long enough to join up with the neck as intended, leaving a pair of non-flush araldite-smeared joints.
- where the neck joins the back was a horrible compromise due, once again to a mis-calculation.
- the centre-join on the back wasn't particularly neat (although as it turned out is was very strong).
- my decision to use sagittally-mounted traditional wooden tuning pegs rather than modern worm-gear tuning machines was an error - I don't care what Stradivarius did or didn't use: worm-gear tuners are simply better!
- another miscalculation had produced sound-holes that were too near the edge of the soundboard and didn't look right.
- there were various places where I'd accidentally taken chunks out of the neck while planing/chiseling etc. Wood-filler should be a last resort, not a major component of the instrument!
- and of course the soundboard was inadequately braced.
When, a short while later the tail-piece started to pull away from the end of the instrument with a series of loud bangs (had the join actually failed the tail-piece would have been catapulted at quite a speed - 8 strings, tuned up to pitch exert a total force of about 60kg**) it spelled the end for poor old Zero. Still, they say you learn more from your mistakes than from your successes.
Watch this space for more instrument-building shenanigans:
** Yes, it's a force, it should be 600N. F**k off, you pedant! :p