I have built Martin Simpson a maple bodied mandola and Martin is selling one of his four Sobell guitars to make room for it.  The guitar he’s selling is his African Blackwood and Italian spruce New World, photos to follow on the Available Now page.

I’m leaving it to settle until next week before starting stringing it.

One instrument gone and another available

At the moment I’m unable to update my ‘available now’ page. My computer guru (aka Jason Sobell) is away from his desk this week so it will be a while before this is sorted out.

In the meantime I can announce that Mike Moskal has sold his Model 2 so this is no longer available.

However, there’s now another instrument available. Stewart McIsaac bought a 10 string bouzouki from me in around 1993 (to add to his earlier 8 string). He now wants to sell the 10 string.
He says it is in good condition apart from a couple of very minor dings, and from the photos he sent, this looks to be the case.

Stewart’s contact details are:
Landline 01416494090
mobile 07931721495
email stewart.nadia1@btinternet.com

Maurice’s good idea

Some time ago Maurice Condie asked me to make a D guitar and suggested I build it on my Model 2 body – a really good idea. A 14 fret to the body D guitar has to be based on a 12 fret model, and whereas the MS and NW D guitars I’ve built have been 14 fret bodies adapted to take the 12 fret bridge position, my Model 2 was designed as a 12 fret to the body guitar from the start and needed no modifications.

To my eyes, the proportions work out particularly well, the longer neck balancing the relatively long body. Built with African Black-wood back and sides, a German spruce soundboard and a Wengé neck, it should sound excellent. Both Maurice and I are looking forward to being able to play it.

There are double position dots at the second fret, and standard dot positions from there up. So the octave double dots are only at the octave when a capo is on the second fret, giving standard scale and tunings. I fitted them this way after discussion with Maurice, previous D guitars have had the orthodox dot positions.

Not great photos (especially the one below), but they show the shape and proportions of the guitar. It’s now ready for David and the spray-booth.

Shaping the neck

At this point it was time to shape the neck and add the last piece of binding and trim across the heel.
Here the mandolin is strapped to the neck shaping arm, held in place by a strap round the body and a clamp over the head.


Working to the guide lines drawn on the neck, I start by tapering the sides of the neck with a draw-knife. This Cuban mahogany is a pleasure to work, with the wood peeling away from the knife smoothly. Other woods can have interlinked grain so that whichever way you work, the knife digs in and the wood wants to splinter. Wengé in particular is not nice to work with knives and chisels so has to be rasped and sanded.
The neck has now been rasped into five flats, ready to be smoothed into the final shape.
It’s hard to see in this photograph, but it has also been tapered so as to be a little shallower at the head end.


Here the neck has been rounded with a fine rasp and sanded through the grades. I’ve also fitted the binding and trim over the heel.

Next the fingerboard will be leveled and cambered, dots inlaid as required, and then the fingerboard can be fretted.

Completing the body

With the back and sides fully prepared, I now had to fit the soundboard. This was rough carved, then final thicknessed, sanded and braced so as to be ready to be glued onto the sides. But before gluing, it sat on the warm shelf for at least a week so as to settle into its final shape.

As before, I wanted any movement to take place before fitting so as to avoid internal tension as far as possible.

Before fitting the top, I first checked the fit of the top with the sides (which already had the top lining glued in place). Anywhere the fit wasn’t perfect was trimmed until it was.

This tends to involve going round and round, improving one area while making others just a little worse. But eventually the fit is perfect.

Then I spread the glue around the lining and top of the sides and clamp the soundboard in place.

To take the bindings and purflings, I routed L shaped ledges around the top and bottom of the body using a laminate trimmer and different bearings to give the different width cuts needed. I didn’t photograph this procedure, but here is a picture of a guitar ready for routing.

It is clamped in a flat bottomed cradle to keep it level, and moved around the stationary cutter. The cutter can move up and down to accommodate variations in height, but the width of the cut is fixed and determined by whichever bearing is attached to the cutter.

This has to be repeated with a different size bearing for each different width ledge, i.e. once for the binding ledge and again for the purfling ledge.

I next bent the Cuban mahogany binding, the red/green/gold back purfling and the Birdsfoot soundboard trim to shape on the hot pipe bender, and trimmed the ends to mitre in with the purfling down the centre of the back and where the sides meet.

I ran glue around the routed ledges, fitted the purfling and bindings in place, and then taped them tightly. After all these years taping binding still seems a primitive system, but it works well and my attempts to devise an effective alternative have not worked out.

Part of the problem is the stiffness of wooden binding, as it requires a stronger pull to make sure it is properly in place than does more flexible plastic binding.[/one_half_last]
[one_half]When the glue had thoroughly dried I (carefully) removed the tape before scraping down any proud binding and purfling. I then sealed this and sanded it clean.

Now the body is ready to receive the rosette, and then the neck and fingerboard.

Patrick de Broux is a generous man. He was unable to attend either of my talks in aid of Whitley Chapel Village hall (see item below) but on both occasions made a £50 donation.
I announced this to the audience, and after they had applauded his generosity, pointed out that Patrick perhaps knew something they didn’t; after all, he’d paid several times the ticket price NOT to come and hear me.

Patrick recently came to me with an interesting project. He asked me to build a Cuban Tres, a small guitar bodied instrument with three pairs of strings. This instrument is a long term project and is still under construction.

He also asked me to build a small bodied mandolin with an extended neck, tuned two and a half tones lower than standard. This would tune DAEB, but a capo on the fifth fret would give mandolin tuning and scale.
This project also really interests me, and I’m now well on with it. Andy Irvine played an extended neck mandolin of mine (but with two extra frets rather than five) for many years, and Patrick had this in mind when thinking of his mandolin.

Here is Andy (centre) with his small bodied long scale mandolin, pictured with his band Mozaik. On the right is Rens van der Zalm with his standard scale large bodied version.
I would have made the back and sides from the Birds-eye maple I love so much, but Patrick asked about my scantling Brazilian rosewood. I found a pretty and very resonant piece just wide enough to make mandolin sides (without having to join two pieces together to get the width, as on scantling guitars).
This scantling would cut into enough pieces to make not just the sides, but also a multi-piece back; it’s nice to have back and sides from the same piece. I later found there was enough left over to make the headstock veneer from it as well.

In the end I felt the back looked best with a dark strip from another scantling down the centre, between two strips from the original scantling on either side. This would have meant the back having four joins, with two purfling strips, one on either side of the dark centre strip.

The two photos below show the strips arranged this way, the second with the surround blacked out to give an idea of how the wood looks in mandolin shape.

But when I sent Patrick pictures, he suggested cutting the dark piece into two with purfling in between down the centre of the back. The dark centre would then blend with dark areas on either side.

While I wasn’t keen to add an extra unnecessary join just for cosmetic reasons, it wasn’t really important so I eventually agreed. The photo right shows the back joined and sanded to thickness (with the mould resting on it to show the final shape).

Patrick’s idea worked out just as he had wanted, in that the black centre strip (now cut into two) blends perfectly with the black edges of the strips on either side. Lacquering may show up a minor change at the join, but I’m sure it won’t be obvious.

The back now looks to be a two piece back (while in fact being a six piece back) instead of looking like a three piece back (while in fact being a five piece back).

Life can be interesting and complicated; Patrick and his ideas always add interest and usually add complication.

All these joins will require re-inforcing strips on the inside.

Bill Flatman built my mandolin and cittern cases in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He died unexpectedly on 3rd March. He was just sixty-five years old.

Bill was a farmer who lived and grew up on a hill farm close to Whitley Chapel. When I was looking for fibre-glass cittern and mandolin cases to replace my primitive wooden ones, Bill volunteered and made them in his small garden shed. He had no previous knowledge of fibre-glass but went round the canoe building classes in the North East of England, learning how to lay up fibre-glass and where to find the required components. He rewarded his informants with heather honey combs from his own bee hives. He was an ingenious and enterprising man.  I and many others will miss him greatly.

The Fretboard Journal

Many people already know of the Fretboard Journal. For those who don’t, it’s a beautifully produced quarterly publication of serious in-depth articles on all subjects concerning fretted instruments.

Last summer Brad Warren visited and stayed a few days, talking, asking questions and taking photographs. The picture at the head of my ‘Wood and Materials’ webpage is one of his photographs.

The current issue of the Fretboard Journal includes the article he wrote about me and my instruments. Brad is a good interviewer; his conversation and questions made me think really hard about what I feel and believe is important to instrument building. Brad is also a good writer, his article presents my views well. The article includes an interview he did with Martin Simpson, concentrating on Martin’s use of my guitars and how he views them.