Hi Graham,
Thanks for checking in on this new mandolin section on the OLF! We are honored to have a seasoned veteran like yourself dropping by.
Graham McDonald wrote: Arnt and Mike,
I am always interested in feedback about how well the book works. I would be interested to know what sections you think are sketchy or don't cover the process well enough.
Ooops! Suddenly I feel like a 14 year old, caught smoking behind the school again... 
Graham, I can only imagine all the time and effort that went into the work of the writing the book, so describing it as “sketchy” is perhaps unfair... OK, it IS unfair, especially coming from a novice like myself!! Like I said, I think your book has a lot of interesting information in addition to (describing) the building process. I guess my point is that when you cover such a large number of topics, including the describing of 4 different types of mandolins between pages 33-146 (plus drawings), you can’t dwell too much on every little thing; it just the nature of things. Well, you could, but then it would be really thick! If you compare it to Cumpiano and Natelson’s guitar making book, for example, your book is quite concise (they show the building of only 2 instruments). Some of their methods are perhaps a bit dated by now, and the language is not exactly too fresh, but but there is a LOT of info, background etc behind most tasks. In your book, it is not that any specific topic is not covered, but you know how some of these things can be discussed at length; if you look at some builders’ web sites, or some of the build threads on the forums, some folks go into great detail about some pretty esoteric building issues. Especially the makers of F-style Loar copies seem extraordinarily anally retentive about some of the details of this instrument; scroll shapes, types of binding joints, even the printing of labels, the list goes on. I realize you haven’t written a book about F-style mandolins, but when you get used to seeing these things discussed all the time, the approach in you book seems, if not ‘sketchy’, so perhaps more general? To make a book that covers not only all the all the building steps of 4 instruments, and not just a few arcane methods for doing specific jobs on one instrument, I guess it is necessary to do it this way, but I wouldn’t mind if you added some more and larger pictures, for example...
So, in an oafish attempt to redeem myself, let me say that I think your book has some strong, and perhaps unique points in that is covers much ground, you can get a lot of mileage out of it through 4 different styles of mandolins (you can also pick and chose between them when you come up with your own unique designs...), but I wouldn’t mind seeing it even thicker! How was that? 
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I'm just jelous we didn't have the guts to wear that. 
It really is a tribute to the power of the internet and Gibson's marketing that so many people believe the only "real" mandolin is an F5 (or a derivative) or if you are poor an A5. A lot of people forget (or dont know) that there is a classical repertoire that goes back to Vivaldi.