Getting Very Close

So the finish is done a satin sort of French Polish, not too shiny, I like it.. The tuners are on a nut & Saddle are made and tonight I glued on the bridge... Should be making music with this Mandocello pretty soon..

I think at least for the start I'm going to string it up with the C string pair as an Octave pair its easy to change if I don't like it.. But harder to go the other direction...

French Polish so far my favourite finish

Front view

Back view

Tuners front

Tuners back

The only way I could set the intonation was to actually string it up
with a temporary tailpiece and just fiddle with the bridge position...
actually 2mm of compensation came out pretty close

Gluing on the bridge

Intonation & Bridge position

So intonation, a bit of a black art to say the least, how do you get it right? I have some ideas for 6 string guitars pretty much based on the work done by others and some trial & error but for a fanned-fret Mandocello I have no idea how to calculate that.. But luckily there is a low tech way to do this..

I take no credit for this method, I saw Dan Erlewine doing this in a guitar bridge replacement video.. Basically you make a temporary tailpiece to allow you to string up the guitar and just adjust the bridge by trial & error until the instrument play in tune up and down the fretboard.. Not really a fast process but it works.. So that is what I did.

Of course once I am finished French polishing I'll have to do it again to get the final bridge placement before I drill  holes etc but this was good practice any way and now that the bridge position is masked off I can start finishing. First z-poxy pore filling, then some sanding & on to French Polish....