I decided to finally build my 18" jumbo design I've been toying with in my head for the past 2 years.

Purchased some wonderful birdseye maple and some very old tops that were previously owned by someone named Abe Wechter.

The biggest news is that my wife agreed to let me convert the living room to a mini workshop. Big sacrifice for her since we still are living in an apartment.

I finally have a violin varnish (on a 5 string viola) that I am happy with. Put a very thinned out coat of varnish on after sanding with 1000 grit. Didn't like the satin after sanding, and the varnish worked like a polish perfectly. Finally after 10. If I did them more often, it would help.

Next is the small baroque guitar. Not much bigger in volume than the viola. I think it will be pitched one string up from a standard guitar. 540 scale, D G C e a. So the G is equal to the low G on the viola, but the third string on a standard guitar. So unless I do something crazy, like put an octave lower C string on it (I'm crazy enough to have thought about it) the viola is actually a note lower.

I only have the neck and head started so far. It should be a fairly quick build. It's cold in the basement. So shorter, intense trips down there.

I'm in the middle of building an octave mandolin that's a hybrid between a mandolin and guitar. Octave mandotar? Octar?

The body is a bit larger than a typical baritone ukulele. The lower bout is 10.5". I originally intended the body size to be about half way between a baritone ukulele and a parlor guitar, but I was only able to find a single hardshell case that was available that would fit that size and it was very spendy so I went with the smaller size for now. Depending on how it sounds, I may go ahead with the larger body size later. The scale length is 20". I probably erred on the side of over-bracing the top, but we'll see. Need to finish up the neck now.

Lutz spruce top, walnut back and sides, and khaya neck with Indian rosewood binding, fretboard, and bridge.

I picked up a pretty remarkable billet of Desert Ironwood (Olneya Tesota) about 15 years ago when I first started building. It's one of the rarest woods in the world and is protected - timber is only acquired from dead trees. Even more than a species like Snakewood, getting large pieces without issues is quite rare. Anyway, I ended up with two back/side sets from an extraordinarily beautiful and mostly flawless billet. The sides are perfectly quarter sawn and the backs are quarter sawn in the center and move to flat sawn at the very edges. No flaws, just clean beautiful grain. It's interesting stuff as the grain structure is quite a bit different than every other wood I've encountered. Check out some photos online to see how amazing this stuff can look. It is often used for pen blanks and small turning projects due to the difficultly of acquiring large pieces without flaws.

Well, I've wanted to build with this stuff for years now and finally decided to fit this guitar into my build list. I'm building with the lesser of the two sets I have (saving the best for down the road) but it is still one of the finest sets I've ever been privileged to build with. It's a 3-piece back and visually, it works out well this way. I'll snap some photos in the near future and post a thread. I don't expect I'll ever find another set of this wood ever again, so it's fun when you get a chance to work with something like this.

What's the tap tone like on that bocote?

working on a 1934 D 28
a 39 000-28
a 47 000-29
and a 41 000-18
and a 34 000-19
not to mention abou 8 more modern guitars