Reso under way

The new resonator uke I’m building is clad with a dark wood that I got from my friend Stuart. He told me what it was but I get confused, maybe it was cocobolo. 

I’ve learnt the hard way the proper order in which to do things, but that didn’t help me avoid all mistakes. I’ll get back to that. But cutting out the large hole for the soundwell and the two wee soundports must be done first. The wood was extremely hard to cut. 



My rosette and soundhole cutter is from Micheal Connor in Australia, a great but somewhat pricey tool. 



Lining it all up, and adding tiny blocks around the edge to keep it in place while glueing. But before glueing...



... you’d better glue the mesh screens in. There is no way to do that cleanly once the top is on. 

And it would be even better to sand the edges of the soundports before glueing the screen in, don’t you think? I swore I’d never forget that, again. But what do you know. I forgot. I’ll take care of it.