No.11 Eduardo Iglesias Lonsdales
This is my first attempt at building a Cigar Box Mandolin. The box was too big to make a fiddle without significant modification. I happened to have some extra mando parts lying around, so. The neck came off of what looked like a kit build mando I picked up at a pawn shop mostly for the nice hard case it was in. the neck seemed weak and I tried to remove it to fix it. It appeared that who ever built it did not use hide glue. It was pretty messed up by then, so, I cut the neck off. This then made the neck a little short, but I managed to use on the box anyway. Once again, I extended the finger board up over the tuning head to get the length I needed for a full scale. To do this I had to add a wedge to the tuning head for the fingerboard and nut to set on.
I used very little bracing and no cleats around the edge. The only bracing I installed were two 3 inch braces from the neck block running diagonally to the sides to help support the neck and keep it from pulling into the sound hole. The only other concession to bracing is that I installed a sound post like a fiddle. The sound post helps support the top and as you move the post around, different tones are accentuated. Pretty awesome. However, both the top and bottom are curved to add strength. Truly, I was amazed that it held together under the tension of 8 strings. Sound great, pretty good volume. It is a must to keep this thing off of your belly, for not to do so kills the volume and tone. Another great thing about this box is that the corners are finger jointed.