MAKING THE BODY: Wiens mandolins feature bookmatched Adirondack spruce tops, and bookmatched or one-piece Sugar maple back plates.  The plate’s arching and shape are based closely on templates taken directly from Loar F-5 #76547.

The Birth of a Soundboard:     After choosing the wood that will serve as the soundboard and back plate, I pass the pieces over a jointer to achieve my center gluing surface. A jointer cuts nice & straight, but its rotating cutterhead leaves a finely scalloped surface which I find un- satisfactory in this application.

So, I follow up on this dead-flat granite surface plate, which is covered in sandpaper. I grind both pieces against the granite until a perfect surface is achieved. I then glue them up on a special joining board using hot hide glue. The bars and wedges ensure that the plate halves go together nice & flat against the board.

Carving the top:     This is my shop-built duplicarver which I use it to rough-carve the mandolin’s plates. It’s pretty simple: There is a stylus and a router attached to the same movable carriage, and as I trace a model of the plate with the stylus, the real plate is being carved by the router on the other side. Here I’m roughing out the maple back plate on the duplicarver, which then gets cut to its final profile on the bandsaw. I will follow this with a similar roughing-out process on the inside of the plate using a separate model.

Finishing the top:     Here I’m in the process of doing the final carving and graduating an on F-5 top.  First I tackle the exterior. It gets carved using several different violin makers’ planes and is then scraped to final dimension. I use a low-angle light in a darkened room to help me spot any minor distortions in the arching. This will be the final exterior belly shape except for the flat edge, which is necessary for the binding rabbet operation.

Carving the inside: Next, I carve and graduate the top from the inside. Graduating is the process of carving the plate gradually thinner as you near its’ outer perimeter. The graduated plate offers less and less resistance to vibration as it travels outwards from the thicker bridge area, allowing them to travel further than they would through a flat, non-graduated soundboard... This results in amplification. To compound this effect further, the thinner, more flexible area around the edge of the instrument allows the graduated soundboard to pump up and down and function like a speaker cone when energy is applied. This is why good archtop mandolins are so sensitive and loud.

I use a dial indicator to help me gauge my progress as I slowly plane and scrape these last few critical shavings from the plate. I am now also tapping and flexing the plate to get a sense of its overall stiffness. I’ll base my final minimum thickness on this factor.

During the final few moments of graduating, I frequently hold the plate in front of a lamp and pass light through it. This lets me see discrepancies that are hard to spot with the dial indicator alone.

Cutting the F-holes: Time to cut the F-holes! This is my pin-routing setup for quickly and accurately cutting the F-holes of the mandolin. The f-hole’s size, shape & location on this aluminum template were taken directly from Loar #76547.

There is a pin mounted in the table surface that matches the diameter of the router bit directly above it.  By mounting the soundboard on the template and bringing the router down, I can plunge through the top and trace the pin around the hole in the template. This gives me perfectly cut F-holes every time.

Bracing the soundboard: The soundboard is now ready for its tone bar bracing. During play, the tonebars serve to dampen and distribute vibration across the soundboard. The luthier can control the degree of damping by carving and “tuning” the tonebars. The asymmetric tonebar arrangement I use has been taken directly from a Genuine Loar F-5 as accurately as possible.

To make them, I must carve two spruce tonebar blanks to exactly fit the interior of the soundboard, and then glue them in place. I start by marking the locations of the tonebars and then hold them in place while I use a shopmade scribe to mark the soundboard’s contour on both sides of the tonebar.  Now it’s just a matter of carving the bar down to the mark right? …Easier said than done.  It can take hours of scraping and sanding and checking to get the tonebars to fit just right.

Once I’m satisfied with the fit of the tonebars, I apply a coat of hideglue to them and set them aside to completely dry. I call this Pre-gluing.  Because these hand carved tonebars are gonna have some minor discrepancies, I want to have a thicker coat of glue that will fill any slight hollows in this critical joint. Once the pre-glue is dry, I hide glue them a second time and finally clamp them in place.

Finishing the tone bars:     With the tonebars in place, I now apply a gauze re-inforcement to each f-hole using hide glue. The gauze helps prevent cracks from starting in this vulnerable area during times of low humidity.

Next I begin to carve the tone bars down using a small chisel and sandpaper. As I get closer to to my minimum dimension, I constantly flex the tonebar with my hands. This particular step is about walking the fine line between big sound and adequate structure. When I feel the tone bars are as close to the minimum as I care to go…I stop.  After some clean-up and final inspection I sign off.

Bending the sides:     The sides of the mandolin start out as straight, thin strips of figured maple that are cut and sanded to the desired thickness. A little water and a hot bending iron is all that is necessary to bend the sides to the proper shape. With highly figured maple, a stainless steel strap is used to assist in the bending, and prevent any break-out.

It takes me 2-3 very intense hours to bend a set of sides that I’m satisfied with. After a day of drying, this set will be trimmed and glued-up into a rim.

Making the internal blocks: Before I can glue the rim up, I must make the F-5‘s 4 internal blocks. The blocks will serve as solid areas to mount the neck and tailpiece, as well as give the sides something solid to join on to.  These blocks are simply bandsawed from some Honduras mahogany and then sanded to final dimension with the spindle and belt sanders.

Making the rim:     This is my Dedicated F-5 Rim making mold. It allows me to accurately and consistently glue up F-5 rims without any unwanted surprises. The shape of the mold is from a direct tracing I took from Loar F-5 #76547, signed on March 31st 1924. The unique asymmetry of that particular Loar has been captured as closely as possible in this piece of tooling.

In the second photo you can see the sides and blocks ready to be placed in the mold. It takes a couple hours of trimming and fitting to get the parts ready for the final glue-up. Which is seen in the third photo.

This last photo shows a fresh batch of F-5 rims made with the jig.

Making and gluing the kerfing:     With the rim glued up, I’ll need some kerfed linings to attach the back and soundboard to the rim. I make these from Basswood exactly like the Loar mandolins had.

This is the gangsaw and crosscut sled I use on the tablesaw to make the cuts in the Basswood linings. The set is comprised of three thin-kerf blades with spacers between them. The two lexan featherboards hold the linings down and against the fence so that they don't ride up or shift during a pass. After the strips are slotted I simply pass them over a belt sander by hand until I achieve the triangular cross section.

I apply the kerfed linings using pearl hide glue. It sets up a bit slower and will give me a few extra seconds of open time so I can all the clamps in place before the glue cools and gels. I pre-warm each lining with a heat gun, then quickly give the lining a coating of hide glue and clamp it to the rim.

Gluing the soundboard: Now with the top linings in place, we are ready to glue this one to a soundboard and make a soundbox out of it!   I use my jig to hold the rim exactly as it was when I glued it up, only now I install a special inside mold with a riser that holds the rim up high enough so that the kerfed linings are clear of the mold.

The use of hot hide glue at this stage again requires special preparation, techniques and tooling that lend themselves to speediness. First I warm the rim with a heat gun, then quickly coat the rim with hide glue and place the soundboard over the pins and onto the rim. I place a clamping caul over the soundboard and bolt it down using a cordless nut driver.

We just made a box! …total time: about 25 seconds!

Routing for the Binding:     Now I want to start getting the binding on. That involves routing precise rabbets completely around the top edge, but first I've gotta do some prep work. So here in the top photo I'm trimming the top with an overhead router so that it's perfectly flush with the sides.

Now I can use my router table to rout the majority of the binding rabbet, I use a a special spiral bit that gives and an extremely smooth cut. It does a nice job, however the router table can't get into the nook in the bottom point or around the scroll. Those  areas  will require a lot of time spent hand cutting.

Before I get out the chisels, I do one final operation with power tools. I use this double-duty router jig to make a cut in the top plate and define the location for the ivoroid 15th fret crosspiece. Later, this jig will also be used cut the actual dovetail mortise.

In this photo I'm just finishing up the scroll rabbet using a knife and chisel. This hand work will determine the final look of the scroll, so I make sure to spend some time just staring at it and making sure it's right before I proceed with binding.

Applying the Binding: I apply the celluloid binding in two stages. First the black/white purfling, followed by a custom- sized outer ivoroid binding. This two-step technique is more time consuming, but replicates that used on the Loar mandolins and the thicker outer binding gives just the right look. In the top photo, I've used a heat gun and a round form to bend the first piece of b/w purfling. It takes time to perfectly shape & fit the piece.

In this second photo, I'm applying the last piece of b/w purfling. I use a modern super glue for most of this process, but my special binding glue to miter the corners so that they appear invisible.

Now I can start applying the thicker ivory grained celluloid binding. Again I use the heat gun and various forms to get the right shape. I fill a syringe with my ivoroid binding glue to help with clean application.

Masking tape, packing tape, wedges and spring clamps keep the pieces in place while the glue dries.