Rosette efforts

I decided to make a rosette on the soprano. I plan to add black binding, but couldn’t get the black veneer strip to work so the rosette will be of untainted maple. 

First action is routing the channel with the massive rosette cutter from Micheal Connor in Australia. Pricey but an absolute joy to use. 

Then I prepared the maple strip by winding it around the bending iron. 

I was very lucky, or automagically skilled, the width of the channel was exactly the width of four turns of the veneer strip. I thinned out the ends and jammed it in. 

Then I added CA glue. A trick I find helpful is using the thin viscosity variety first, then switching to medium thickness glue. The thin glue will help drawing the thicker in, that’s beneficial because I wouldn’t trust only the thin stuff. 

I let it dry for an hour or so then planed it down with my Little Victor plane, known from this blog in 2009 or thereabouts. 

Aha, look here: https://argapa.blogspot.com/2008/10/very-nice-plane.html?m=0

And it is done, at least as far as it needs to be right now. Next up is cutting the soundhole and then we’re off to the braces!

New ukes started

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. 

Or as we say more often: hiya. The itch is coming back and it can’t all be ticks can it now. I delved into the stash and emerged with mahogany and parts for a reso skeleton. 

Starting out by glueing up the skeleton and sawing out plates for the acoustic soprano. 

Bending did not go smoothly. This is ancient wood and it is brittle, I actually had to bend the soprano rim back to straight again and shave a bit more off with the drum sander. Now it’s a bit thin, maybe I’ll secure it with transverse cleats. I’ll give it a think. 

Last pic is of the reso, I glued the rim onto the skeleton. It is a one piece rim, both because I like that better and because it is much easier to glue since I can tighten it around the round part as I clamp the waist with my waist clamping clamp. 

Cheers! 

Reso [sort of] done

Hiya! In between travels I hunkered down in the workshop for a bit to wrap things up. First up was marking the screw holes for the cover plate, using my clear acrylic template. I have no idea why some words seem to be links.

There is a controversy regarding padding under the cone, some use felt, some prefer using nothing. I use rubber, thinking of it as a speaker cone and those usually hang in flexible material. 

And here you can see the ring of rubber at the bottom of the well. 

I check the bridge for an ok string height, which I leave on the high side for these. A reso sounds best when you spank the strings I think, closely followed by it being played by someone other than me.

The bridge gets notches for the strings and swoopy bits for intonation, the C-string needs to be a tad longer. 

A look at the list says this is number 128!

And I’m really pleased with how it turned out. Headstock is my preferred shape, with offset tuners and the rough-sawn sides (I should tell the buyer that), inlays on the fretboard turned out super, and the spruce / mahogany combo is really elegant. But wait - what’s that dark spot at 10 o’clock by the coverplate? It’s a mark I made in the spruce and then tried to fill, invisibly. I kind of failed.