Broken Wing Guitar repairs and restores used, salvaged, damaged, and vintage string instruments.....It began with a background and love of woodworking and acoustic music that developed into a passion as all things that you love do.To get our hands dirty and maybe with a little luck be able to give back some life to an instrument that may have ended up in the trash or someone's attic or closet, and let it make sweet music as it was intended to do. I do not claim to be the finest luthier or craftsman by any measure, just a person with a love for music and the instruments and people that make it.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

May Bell Mandolin



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.


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