Now that the '29 Triolian mandolin saga is over, here are some photos.
I got it in February from my friend Bert Deivert (a
great mandolin player if you haven't heard him already) with a very old hide glue headstock repair. Here's how it looked when I got it, with a nearly flawless headstock finish touch-up hiding the break:
I played it for four months without any issues...
The mandolin player in my band and I both played it on our recording session in June, and we were both surprised at how piano-like it sounded on the recordings.
At the end of June, a bump (while inside a closed hardshell case) on a very hot and humid day popped it off again. While the touchup work itself was spectacular (to the point that the luthier doing a neck reset and refret hadn't even noticed it) but the original repair itself was less than perfect.
There were a couple of structurally useless dowels in there from before (seen as dark dots in the photo above), but the holes they left behind made it easy to clamp the two pieces together and glue them with Titebond.
Unfortunately after 36 hours of drying time, it lasted only another 48 hours before the Titebond showed signs of "creeping" (and it wasn't Titebond II or Titebond III, it was "original" Titebond which should be the least prone to creep).
Now this part is not for those that get queasy easily. If gore makes you nauseous, look away now.
Next step was to re-glue with epoxy and shave away a layer from the back of the headstock. A new maple veneer with a "backstrap" overlapping the break replaces the wood that has been removed.
The same process is repeated for the front of the headstock.
The original decal was gone when I got the mandolin (probably lost during the first repair) so might as well replace it.
Plenty of high-resolution photos online help get the exact placement of the decal right!
Now it's good as new, with the headstock stronger than it ever was.
Anyone who has held a National mandolin in their hands knows how thin the wood is where the neck transitions to the headstock. Why didn't they put a volute there? It would have really improved the structural integrity of those necks.
The guy who plays mandolin with me has a 1931 Style 1 mandolin and it has been broken and repaired in the exact same spot. They're both great sounding mandolins, but quite different from one another.
