The neck on the Mandolin will be fixed and glued into place, there is a tenant under the top cover which will be hidden but I need to cut out a pocket in the top cover to accommodate the rest of the neck. I laid this out and used a fine saw to cut inside the line giving me a nice clean edge.
I then carefully chiselled out the end of the pocket and then filed everything until I had a nice sung fit. I had to attach the top to the body with double sided tape while I laid out the neck pocket.
At this stage I don't want the top permanently attached as I still have to decide on the position of the volume and tone controls and need to glue the neck in place. It's nice to see the instrument starting to look something like I imagined. The proportions are great and the weight is nice although none of the hardware has been fitted yet.
I had a chance to use my new drill press this weekend as well when I drilled the fret markers on the top and side of the fret board.
I spent some time setting up the depth stop and carefully mounted the neck in my mitre block and drilled each hole using a 'lip and spur' drill bit which gives a nice clean round hole.
The drill press made short work of the holes in the top of the fret board and so I mixed some black epoxy putty and squeezed this into the holes and left it for 24 hours before sanding smooth.
I chose not to drill a fret marker for the 21st fret as the gap between the frets is just too narrow. I think the dots look ascetically balanced anyway and a 4th dot above the twelfth fret might have made things look a little clamped.
The neck is now ready for fretting, I have cut the 21 frets ready to install and will get on with this over the next couple of days. I can then shape the back of the neck, fit a laminate on to the top of the head and drill the machine head holes. So still plenty of work to do!
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