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This was by far more challenging than I had thought it to be but as with most things Murphy did indeed raise his ugly head.
A member of the wife's band had been after me to build him a case for his mandolin and after many months of designing in my head I decided I was up for the challenge. With a limited supply of cherry I was afraid of making any mistakes.
I re-sawed the cherry into 1/16" thick pieces and soaked them in water for several days, while it was soaking I began to build the form for the main body. After my form was done my thinking turned to what kind of glue would be best, this is where I can tell you Polyurethane glue does not go well with damp wood while trying wrap wood around a form! I wound up trimming the stuff out of my beard and throwing a T-shirt away!
That was one problem and the next was how am I going to attach the ends of the wood together and not have it looking like crap. The solution turned out to be a butt plate with 3/4" rabbit on the back side glued and screwed to it and then cover it with burgundy felt After solving that problem I needed to do something with the outside of the butt plate so it wouldn't like it didn't have a purpose other than just a chunk of wood hanging off the back so I scroll sawed out his initials and mounted them there.
Not having any cherry wide enough to have a solid lid I routered a shallow 1/4" groove dowe the joint line and inlaid a ribbon of ash and sanded it down flush. Then came designing a handle for it, the picture is the best I could come up with and to this day I'm out of the instrument case building!

Gallery

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Looks super Tom
 

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That's very nice! You overcame many challenges and won.
 

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Great job on the case! We all need learning experiences, and it looks like you came through this one with flying colors.
 

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It looks great. I'm glad you told us what a PITA it was to make, so I won't rush out and start one for my guitar.
 

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This is so nice. I only see one problem; there is no way I would let your wife's friend use it. What if it gets damaged on the road? You might have to build a case for the case; or resereve it for display only.
 

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Very nice. With what you learned from making this case, probably, you could now actually make a mandolin. This actually gives me the idea to try and make a case for my guitar. It is a very old Gibson acoustic guitar that doesn't fit the standard sized cases for most guitars.
 

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Thanks everyone for your comments. As it turned out shortly after I made this and gave it to the Bill his health started to fail and retired from playing music so now it's a display case if you will for his mandolin.
 

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Beautiful work, as always. Thanks for posting.

God Bless
tom
 
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