Day 4 ... it is becoming a routine now ...
everybody is at the shop early, we stand around munching on breakfast (love those boiled eggs!!! Thank you Rosemary!!) and discussing the previous days dose of "firehose lutherie". Checking out each others mandolin in progress and doing touch up sanding, chiseling, and generally panting for the next session to begin. Today was no different but with the added excitement that
today is the day we tap tune and close our mandolin bodies basically birthing our mandolins. Confidence was high!
The day started with a lecture on strings and bridge compensation. One very interesting thing for me was to learn that regardless of the number of "brands" of strings there are on the market ... there are basically nine manufacturers ... who knew?
After the lecture we went to the "lab" to get demonstrations of fretboard and bridge construction. Ken did a great job of showing us every step from ...
selection of wood for the board...
... to careful layout with a template ...
... to cutting the rough shape ...
... to shaping the board using a router ...
Next Ken demonstrated the gang saw that is used to cut the frets to an exact depth and perfect spacing ...
This is the fixture used to radius fretboards ... an amazing creation! ...
Ken also showed us how to create a compensated bridge ...
Here are several photos of the scroll work being done by the campers ...
And then we are finally at the meat of the whole matter ...
its time to tap tune these puppies!!!! .. the tone bars were glued into the F5's previously and Roger demonstrated the different tones the open back mandolin soundboards produce prior to tuning ...
... we discussed at length WHY we tap tune and why it works ... and then it was time for each of us individually to proceed to the lab with Roger to get our mandolin tap tuned by the master ... excitement was at a fever pitch as we each awaited our turn (it took about 30 minutes per mandolin to get the tuning done) ...
Once we all got the tuning done ... it was getting near time to glue the backs on and close the body ... each of the campers had a "constructed by ..." label and a "Tuned by Roger Siminoff" label glued on the back before closing ...
Here is a picture of one of the campers "inside" showing a "Virzi" tone producer installed ...
Labels going on before closing ...
... and then we closed them up ... when we take the clamps off ... we will have "tuned" mandolins ...
... I'll show pictures tomorrow of the "finished" (as far as camp goes) mandolins ... I had already filled my SD card before we took the clamps off but I can tell you now
there are six very very happy people here at the Siminoff Lutherie Camp today!! Once we held our mandolins and started tapping on the soundboards our smiles got wider and wider and wider ... these six mandolins (5 F5's and my F4) are going to be cannons!! ... and as advertised ... each of the F5's taps out to the same note and tone ... it is an amazing phenomenon ... until you have personally experienced the obvious transformation of the tone & timbre of the soundboards as the tone bars are carved and mass is removed and seen with your own eyes the quantification of the change on a strobe tuner and then finally observed empirically the resulting consistency of tone after the whole system is closed you can't fully appreciate the legitimacy of "tap tuning" ... I've heard it and seen it and I absolutely believe it ... (there are 5 others in the class will attest to the same thing) ...
Tomorrow is graduation day ... we will be binding our fretboards and getting reviews on fretting, staining, finish and other details ...
I've asked my camp mates to please add their comments to this web log when they have time and am looking forward to their differnt perspectives as well as any readers ... I hope you are enjoying the ride!!
