I have been working on this old May Bell mandolin for a while now. Not certain if I took original pictures of when it was acquired, I will check tomorrow. These pictures start after it was taken apart. The back was a homemade piece of oak that someone had used to start repairing, but was no where close to matching anything so it was removed and discarded. The soundboard is so badly damaged that I had to hold it together with tape just to use it as a template. The fretboard was not salvageable and was removed. The linings were pretty chewed up and some had to be replaced.
The back was made out of a side piece of mahogany that was laying around, cut into two pieces and glued together. It does not match the sides but should work fine once stain is applied. The soundboard was made out of some small sitka spruce pieces.
Got to try out the new planer that came in today to plane down the thickness of the soundboard. Now to cut the sound hole and apply rosette. More to come later.
