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The music store I do some work for sent me this mandolin to see if I could do anything with it. Two fairly obvious issues otherwise its in pretty great shape.

First, one of the braces has come right off and I can see the very end of the second brace inside and it looks like its coming loose too. Any tricks other than taking the back off to fix loose braces inside mandolins?

Second, a screw holding the tailpiece has disappeared and over time the string tension has pulled up on the tail piece, and its bringing the binding with it (it seems other than the missing screw the tail piece is fixed directly to the binding somehow). This seems fairly simple, just get rid of the strings, glue the binding back on and find a new screw to anchor the tailpiece.

There isn't any information on the instrument to tell me what it is. But if the back does need to come off my gut says it may not be worth it. And if it is worth it, or at least worth it to the customer I'll likely pass it off to someone with more experience as I like to reserve learning experiences for my own personal instruments.

Your gut is right, this mandolin will likely not be worth the effort to fix it.

Besides the top I've found these mandos usually have excessive relief in the neck, sometimes companies would just build these out of super green wood. Not saying that this one isn't a pringle but I have a feeling it likely is.

That issue at the tailpiece is likely the top having moved a bit as well, it's usually not limited to the binding.

There are no tricks to that problem. You will have to make a mold to hold the shape of the ribs to the original back, remove the back, glue the brace in and glue the back on again.

The instrument is likely a plywood Kay or similar. Not worth the repair. Yes, the top has likely separated from the ribs too.

What Dan and Haans say is all the more reasons for you to take on the repair. If you fail, you haven't hurt anything, if you succeed you've learned a lot. My first neck reset attempt was a POS mandolin, I failed. A few later I built a mandolin and had that experience to work from.

I agree - it's a good practice piece, nil cash value, so not too risky.

I find little benefit by making an outside mold. The back should restore the original shape of the instrument if you're reasonably careful aligning it as you glue it on.

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Cheers,

Frank Ford

FRETS.COM
HomeShopTech
FRETS.NET

Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. Do it all in one day, might work. Might be good practice, but will likely end up costing you time.

Well, I've got no shortage of learning projects at hand, so I'm not too itchy to take on another. I'll talk to the owner and see what they'd like to do.