Two ukes finished

Well I finally decided to be happy with the finish and call them done. Of course, after that decision there are a few small jobs that need seeing to. Especially on the reso. 

The acoustic soprano got a saddle, a nut and tuner pegs. Those are planetary geared pegs from Twofold Media if I recall correctly, excellent but pricey and I need to import them from Australia. 

Number 129 is what it is. This one went to a friend of mine on the island so it stays in the vicinity. 

And here it is in the kitchen. As always a flat bottom means it can stand by itself if you’d ever want to show off in front of your friends. 

The reso then. It needs a string holder instead of the cutting holes stamped in the coverplate. I fashioned this one out of ironwood, from a scrap piece of demo flooring material I got to the office. 

The string holder is held by a couple of small screws and washers from beneath. 

Setting up a reso gets old very quickly - shaving off a smidge from the bridge means removing all screws hilding the coverplate. I needed to do that three or four times before the action height was perfect. The. Ut is buffalo horn, I thought the black detail went well with the tuners. 

And a full frontal with it standing next to number 74, one of my personal ukes. 

Now it is shipped off to its new home. 

Everything all at once

I hope my license to blog doesn’t get revoked even though I mismanage it severly. So sorry for the lack of updates. A while back I made the fretboards and I took some extra time making the frets level and shiny. Unfortunately I didn’t take pictures of the processes but the results are fine. 

And for the acoustic soprano I made a bridge that I placed using the old method of marking the extended edge lines from the fretboard. 

The lengthwise position is twice the ditance of the twelth fret from the nut, plus a wee bit for compensation. 

And now we’re at the finishing stage! I have developed my method of making a shellac finish over the years and I am getting better results. Simply put, I make a thicker base coat and level that with a thin card scraper before I start polishing. 

It’s looking rather nice isn’t it. Ye olde mahogany from my dad’s boat building project in the 1960:s. 

Acoustic soprano picking up the slack

I’m struggling a bit with keeping the blog updated, progress on the ukes are faster than that on the blog posts. But this is an account of the last week’s work, mainly on the acoustic sop (although I might have glued the back onto the reso).

I have tried numerous kinds of neck joints - Spanish heel, tenon, dowels, bolt on with barrel nut, and on the piccolos a pointy wood screw. And that last one is great, the piccolo necks are of cherry and the screw gets all the purchase it needs. 

But on this soprano the neck is mahogany and I didn’t want to rely on the screw just going into the endgrain. The solution is a wee dowel going through the heel, and the screw going into that. So sort of like a barrel bolt but easier since I don’t have to faff around as mucv with aligning the holes. 

It’s of cöurse a one piece top so a piece of tape helps with a temporary centerline. 

And oh how the alignment worked out. This is a pic I wouldn’t have published on exactly all my instruments. 

And as usual it can stand on its own. Yonks ago I chose a flat butt for easier end block mounting, and I’m sticking to it. 

Those pics above were meant to be in a post of their own, or rather the following snippet is so fascinating it really deserves a separate post. But can I be arsed? Can I feck. 

What you see below is a sawn off piece of a yarn holder stick (not the correct term) from an antique loom. We chucked the loom a few years ago but I saved several pieces that I deemed valuable on account of the grain count and direction. And check out that grain, it’s hard to find wood like that nowadays. 

I planed the profile down so it was all flat, but as I look at it now maybe I could have gotten more braces out of it if I tried. 

But I needed three and I got three by sawing it lengthwise. The short piece from the middle was just enough for the short brace by the waist. 

It’s been a while since I showed you this, but rather than glueing the braces to the back and then glueing the whole ensemble to the rim, I notch out the lining to accept the braces and glue them in before the back is attached. This makes sense to me as I have better control of the joints and the angles. And I get to use my Japanese bar clamps. They’re made of brass. 

Next job will be to smooth out any discrepancies between the braces and the rim by rubbing the uke in the radius dish with a sandpaper cladding. Then we’re ready to glue the back on and that, I promise you, will be exciting.