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I'm building an A-style carved top and back mandolin. I've got the
outside of both the top and back plates carved, and I've got the inside of
the back roughed out. I'm about to start final carving on the back plate,
but I need two things:
1. a dial indicator, easy enough with Harbor Freight down the road
2. some help identifying the proper thickness of the plates, which is
where I need your help.

I'm making the plates out of mahogany, not spruce top/maple back as
would be traditional. For that reason, I wonder if the thicknesses
shouldn't be different. I don't think the back plate will be much different
than a traditional maple plate, but I would think the top plate would have
to be different.

I do recognize that the thickness will vary - I guess I'm wondering about
that minimum area at the recurve and the max thickness around the top
of the dome.

Siminoff's book and intuition are my two primary guides here. Neither is
cutting it for this particular question. Hope you can help.

Thanks!

If it were me, I would carve as if it were spruce, then slowly continue thinning it until it sounds right when i thump it.

Al

The problem is that I don't know what "right" sounds like...

Why are you trying an unknown combination before having a bit of experience under your belt?

A mandolin is a very tough instrument to get rich tone from, and any tone from, in fact. Starting out with a hardwood top puts you deep in the hole before you even start.

Spruce mandolin tops can be had for cheap, free, even.

Why are you trying an unknown combination before having a bit of
experience under your belt?

Fair question. Three reasons:

1. I want a mandolin, and the thought of building one is, not surprisingly,
attractive.

2. I'm using almost exclusively materials that I already have on hand
- a mahogany plank for the top and back plates, head and tail blocks;
- a practice sapele guitar side that will become the rib;
- another chunk of mahogany left over from the last guitar neck will be
enough for the neck on this mando;
- an ebony fingerboard that I planed just too thin for use on the guitar
might be salvagable for the mando fingerboard;
- I've got a hunk of ash that I imagine I'll make bindings, kerfing, and
fretboard dots from.
- The dog's bone will do fine for a nut.
- I got a set of tuners, a bridge, and a tailpiece as gifts last Christmas.

3. I won't be the first person on the planet to build a mahogany mandolin,
and even if I had used spruce and maple, I still wouldn't know what "right"
sounds like.


All that said, I haven't run across any free spruce mandolin tops yet. If
the construction of this instrument either goes well, is enjoyable, or both,
then I imagine I'll embark on a more traditional instrument as a future
project. Curly maple back and neck, spruce top, etc.

The free spruce comes compliments of anyone's firewood pile in these parts <bg> Also, it isn't too hard ot find a 2x6 or even a 2x4 with a 16" long, clear section. Cut it up so the grain is oriented close to the quarter, and glue it up. My first mandolin had a 4 or 5 piece spruce top glued up like this, and it sounds fine enough to still be worth playing, over 10 years later. The back and sides came from a maple board that was once a baseboard in an old home, ans the neck is glued up mahogany from an old door frame. Like you, I was using what I had scrounged up, but I did keep the body combination "traditional", and this wa, what I learned from this one immediately made the second mandolin better, because I now had a faint idea what "right" sounded like.

I think the mahogany back and sides are fine, but I would highly suggest you find some spruce for the top. Next time you drive by a construction or demolition site, stop, walk around, and keep your eyes open. Or head to Home Depot or Lowes and spend the $5 on a 2x6 or 2x8.....

Jay:

I have a couple of extra Engleman tops laying around. If you want one, I'd be glad to give you one. Send me a PM.

-Mark

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Pullman, WA

The more I know, the more I know I don't know.

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