Travel uke, another one

I found a travel uke in the rubble on the bench, and thought I should finish it. Most of it is done in terms of shaping. This won’t be a zero sanding uke, the grain in the neck was quite strange and sandpaper was the only way out. Does this mean I can’t leave any knife marks? Hmm. 

Checking the neck with the fret slotting jig confirmed the dimensions were good so I could crack on with slot cutting. But first I needed to fix the jig to the neck. 

This I do with the future fret marker dots, still in rod form. I drill holes with a 1.6 mm drill in a pin vise...



... and glue in the styrene rod from the model maker’s store. A store that is now closed, bastard e-commerce shutting down the shops of my youth. And bastard youtube keeping the young away from model making. 



With the rods keeping the jig in place I found this way of keeping the uke in place. I use the same jig on my piccolos but they have headstocks with parallel sides that go in the vise. 



This is actually really hairy. If I cut the rods off too close to the surface in the first pass, the material buckles and create a small pit in the dot. I use multiple passes and shave off the last fraction with the chisel resting flat on the board. 



Speaking of pits, remember that difficult grain in the neck? I got some tear-out on the front so I put superglue in and hit it with accelerator. When I scraped it flush it doesn’t show a lot, and the small pit won’t catch the A string.