here is a photo of the main problem.... the fact that the neck has moved, cracking the sound board, but making the playing height far too high.

Now I have to figure out how to get the photos to appear with the text, as thumbnails..... ah me

This week an unusual mandolin arrived from a friend, to be restored for its Canadian buyer. It was French built by Louis Morra in Marseille, probably in the early twentieth century. Its unusual because its ALMOST a harp mandolin. I you look at the pictures you will see what I mean..... the body extension normally joins up with the head, but in this case no.

When it arrived it was in a sad state.... a small woodworm problem, cracks, shrinkage, separations and warping. AND the are bits missing. But it can be rebuilt!!

It was fairly easy to de-construct, as many of the seams were open, and then the reasons for the terrible state of the instrument became apparent...... two main things really; first the heel is so small, just not enough foot area to allow the heel to resist the string pressure pulling the neck up, and second, it is incredibly thin, the back no more than 1.25mm thick, to resist a string pressure of around 60kgs!!

More shortly as work progreses....

And more as soon as I can work out how to get the images to appear here.... BRWX

Today I have created a blog for Mandolin Hospital so that I can upload photos of current restorations and construction. Only a small portion of these things would otherwise evr get seen on the site. Hopefully it will also act as some kind of forum for all those people who email me with restoration related queries, in which there has been a lot of interest.

Its going to take me a while to get stuff on here, but I begin full of good intentions. We'll see how it goes! Dave

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