MoonbeamMandolins.com
Title
Moon Beam Mandolins! Hand carved by musicians with love.
Description
I started out playing an early 20’s Gibson mandolin and was very happy with the tone quality, unfortunately, the playability was not the best. My fingers were sore and my speed was being hindered because the action was so high. I was saving my money for a new mandolin, but being a full time student did not help my finance situation. My parents wanted to help out, but they could not afford the new mandolin either. So, they decided to buy me some wood and a mandolin building book for Christmas. Ha! Ha! I thought it was a joke. I was an inexperienced wood worker and building a mandolin seemed more than a bit overwhelming. With my parents encouragement, I began reading the book and the process become clearer in my mind. I remember thinking to myself “I just follow the directions in this book and a mandolin will appear. It’s simple.” Wow did my view drastically change after just one day of hand carving. It was hard work. My entire body hurt. Despite the wear and tear, I continued to work steadily while going to school. The day finally came when my first F-Style mandolin was completed. It was time to string it up and see how I had done. It had an authoritative high end and yet a mysterious woodiness. The chop was head turning and the balanced tone was remarkable.
I decided to stick with the Red Spruce soundboard due to my prior success with that very dense wood species. The Red Spruce top for #2 was carved to perfection. The flexibility was remarkable. For the back, I choose to stray from the traditional Curly Maple and experiment with Walnut. I knew of a piece that was decades old in a nearby barn. Needless to say, I did not know what to expect out of the Walnut, but I was pleasantly surprised when it was finished.
I had heard of many instruments throughout history consisting of either Sitka or Engelman Spruce. Sitka has the greatest strength to weight ratio of all the top woods and Engelman is one of the softest. I decided to go with the softer Engelman Spruce for the soundboard. For the back, I chose a very dense highly figured Cherry. These materials are total extremes. In order to keep the structural stability, the Engelman soundboard was carved much thicker than the previous Red Spruce. The Cherry, on the other hand, had to be carved much thinner to be flexible enough to adequately transfer sound waves.
