Oh err... three on the bench!

Well this is nice. Since starting that reso a while back I have picked up some steam, and now I have no fewer than three ukes on the bench. The reso, a travel uke, and an acoustic soprano bound for Bavaria. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We’ll take the reso first. The wood was resawn, the plates for the top and back were joined, and sanded together with the rim. 

Then I assembled the skeleton. The dowels are cut to 50 mm length and the neck block and a temporary spacer make sure it comes together the way it should. 



I didn’t take pics of bending the rim, sorry about that. But here’s me laying out the positions for the holes for the come and sound ports. 



Then I found one of the blanks I’ve prepared for the travel ukes and couldn’t keep from carving the neck on it. First the entry point with the two handled knife. 



Then the Stanley spokeshave - very effective. 



For the finer details I used my Millers Falls no.1, the cigar spokeshave. It’s weird and fiddly to setup but once you get it to work it does things no other tool does. 



And here are some of the parts for the soprano I’m making for a new and very polite customer who almost gave me the freedom to make whatever ukulele I wanted to build for him. We were definitely on the same page regarding specs so I’m convinced he’ll be happy. I’m using very old mahogany for this, and kept the sides quite thick. In the picture you see me gluing the neck block.