Trade Skill Deficiency: Repairing that Bowlback Mandolin

One day last summer, I found Sarah with an antique instrument her mother had found for he, somewhere - not an uncommon occurence - and so I coaxed her into thinking that allowing me to repair a crack in it would be a good idea.

Upon returning home, I found that there were actually two cracks on the body, one the edge where the soundboard met the side, and one split on the very back of the bowl caused by tension.

Last summer was a particularly tragic and extreme time in my life. These factors may have influenced my most brilliant realization every: the best way to repair the two minor faults would be to pry and saw the soundboard of the mandolin off of it.

Unfortunately, I don't have any early "before" pictures. So we must stay strong for the first phrase of this blog post. A recap:

 

Uh-oh...

With the soundboard off, it was easy to remove the frets, which were chipping into pieces. It also made removing the hardware easier, to polish. And with the top off, refinishing it seemed like pretty good idea, too.

Sanding the soundboard. The pickguard (almost) came off in one piece, a miracle!

After sanding, I refinished the top with some sort of really intense varnish my dad had sitting around. Apparently it's illegal to buy for hobby things, like this; it's only sold for finishing the hulls of wooden boats. It dried hard as glass, which is awesome - the varnish did not dampen the mandolin's timbre at all. Regardless, I'm sure a real luthier would have my head for applying nautical supplies to antique instruments. Especially when the instruments aren't mine.

The endpin, where all of the strings fasten to, polished with steel wool - no longer covered in glorious rust..

Tuning machines! The one on the right is polished, the on the left.. not yet..

After removing the frets and sorting out which chips of rotting wood went in which places, I glued down the first half of the fretboard thus-like.

With the table refinished and half the fretboard replaced, I can slip the hardware back in, throw the saddle and pickguard on, and pretend that I'm almost done.

Unfortunately, the crazy had only begun. I went back to school after getting this far, and spent the whole semester worrying that I had glued the fretboard down unevenly. This would cause all of the strings to rattle whenever played, a horrible, miserable end to the taterbug. Luckily, my fears were founded. Here's when I start documenting things for real.

Thank the good LORD; it looks straight. From here on out, keeping the fretboard even was my primary concern.

Next there was the challenge of filling the split on the bowl. It seemed like it would be a good idea to pill it together before replacing the soundboard, so that the instrument has more flexibility. I filled in the split with one of these wood samples my dad had laying around.

I guess it's like a paint chip for guys who, uh, like wood.

I slathered a sliver of the wood sample with glue and slid it into the split, marked by our pointy blue friend here. Electrical tape, which is very elastic, was used to pull the sides around the split.

Looking down into the mandolin. The whole thing was covered in dust when I opened it up; washing it off revealed a beautiful scarlet paint-job. Over the split, someone had glued fabric, a long time ago. I guess it doesn't hold up.

Once the split was mended, the next order of business was to replace the top of the mandolin. This was a good reason to panic- if the soundboard wasn't perfectly level with the neck, the fretboard would be uneven, and the strings wouldn't clear it.

I used a wee piece of that wood sample to lift up the narrowest end of the soundboard.

Measure twice, cut once: all seems in order here. There is a small gap between the neck and the soundboard. That's my fault, because I had to saw the fretboard in half in order to remove the top of the mandolin.

Lining the rim of the bowl with glue, soon the top will be back on, hopefully forever. What's that, you ask? What kind of glue?

Tightbond! Carpenters buy this by the gallon. "Not epoxy?" I asked the repair guy at the Music Box, "Unless you want to boil your own animal glue, Titebond's the way to go."

All wrapped up: more electrical tape, pulling the soundboard down like a crocodile's maw.