Mandolins #2 and #3

Tonight I finished routing and cleaning up the top binding channel on both mandolins, as well as actually gluing the binding on both. Wow, talk about another step that went MUCH smoother than on my first mandolin build. It gave me fits. The difference? On my first, I did the top binding after the neck was already attached, which is what most people do. Where the neck joins the body is very tricky, and I didn't do a very good job of routing the binding channel there, or cutting the edge to meet the neck cleanly. In doing it before I attached the necks on these, I have overlap into the neck joint area that I'll be able to trim perfectly before attaching the neck. MUCH better process, I don't know why this isn't the standard method. Here's a pic of one of them with the binding glued on. Oh, and another thing I learned with my first one, the tape can "tear out" the spruce, so I stick the pieces of tape on my jeans before using it to get rid of some of the stickiness.