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I haunt used book stores and pick up pretty much any luthier-related books I find.
Found a copy of this one this weekend.
I've read it over and come to the conclusion that I'm not going to be building any mandolins, too many guitars already on my list.

$20 shipped. It's in decent shape, a couple stained pages, the drawings are in great shape.
Heck, put it on Ebay for $150 if you want, other folks are.

wow. I have this book in my hand and the blueprints that came with it. I started my journey in 1997 with this book. I have the neck I made sitting here and the top and back plates. I got stuck on the "carve bowl" part and it all sat unused until a couple years ago when I bought John's kit. I still use all my tools from that project.

I can't believe it is listed for 150 bucks. If you sort in advanced search by "sold" you can see that one has sold but for 25 bucks.

thanks for posting. i need to finish this thing.

jread wrote:....i need to finish this thing.

My thoughts exactly. I don’t need to add a mandolin to the list of things not getting done.....

Interesting post. I got Siminoff's book years ago, but before the book he sold a predecessor binder with plans and instructions. I bought that around 1979. Speaking of lists of things needing to get done, my mandolin 40 some years later now has all of its parts carved, bent and otherwise ready. If I live another 10 years I might actually finish it. :-)

Let's turn this into an "unfinished mandolins" post. I have the full size blueprint that came with this book somewhere around here. I lost my tiny ibex plane decades ago after giving up on carving bowls. I know I can buy pre-cut ones and one of these days I just might.