Palace ukulele?!

Check out the ancient wooden boards that are torn out from a palace in Stockholm. The palace was built in the 1690:s and is currently being modified. Some material, however valuable, will have to go.

But does it go to waste? Nah, not if the Argapanator can help it. When I get the time I'll clean them up and see if it's possible to resaw bits of them to soundboards.

Ripping neck blanks

I must have mentioned my Pax rip saw before. Today I used it to roughly shape the neck blanks for the resos.

In the first pic you can see the small cuts I make with a chisel to start the saw cut. The rip saw has very large teeth and can jump around a bit without these incisions.

The second pic shows the saw halfway through the second cut.

Some tools do the job so fast I wish I had more to use them for, and this is definitely the case with this rip saw - 3 or 4 minutes of sawing just isn't enough!

Last weeks going-ons

Since I bent those sides on monday morning, I've done a bit more. The Argapa soprano no. 1 excluded of course, it's just there for some measuring.

From left: the koa concert top with its nifty rosette, a piccolo neck, a piccolo top braced and with the rim glued on.

And then the major effort, the resonator sides are glued to the plywood skeletons. This is very very fiddly to get right with the bookmatched butt and the waist going into the curve of the plywood parts. But making the sides in two halves is a lot easier than making one-piece rims for these. I've done that a couple of times and swore a lot.

And to the right is a couple of neck blanks of ash and mahogany for the resos.

Brand new best day EVVAH!

This is post number...


666.


So there. And how fitting that I'm going to see Slayer live tonight here in Stockholm. Won't be the same without Jeff Hanneman of course but I won't quit if Kerry and Tom won't.

In the pic I put their epic live album from 1991, a Lego incarnation of Motörhead (made by Johan), and an angry monkey.

You can also see half of my rosette circle cutter wot I bought from Micheal Connor in Australia, a beautiful and well made tool.

And yesterday I did make my first rosette, of cherry and mahogany inlaid in the top for the koa concert. Seems of minor importance compared to the show tonight.

And the post number.

Which is...


666.

I've bent sides!

Fired up the electrical hot pipe and made these: two one piece rims for piccolos, one set of sides for a koa concert uke, and sides for two redonators of ash and English walnut respectively.

The resos are spoken for, one of the piccolos is too. But the koa concert I just felt like making. The wood came from Pete Howlett (all my koa did) and I was going to make a soprano but changed my mind. Maybe someone wants it.

I have gotten a lot better at hand bending. The piccolo rims take me just under ten minutes to make. One of the tricks was (of course) to wait until the pipe is, well, piping hot.

Also a big welcome to my new follower Jim!

Planing

Tonight I spent some time adkusting my Stanley Bailey No. 6 plane. Apparently it's the exact same model as the one that was stolen from my dad a while back. 

I made the mouth opening tighter, oiled the adjustment knob and set the chip breaker closer to the edge. 

To try it I took it to a piccolo soundboard of terribly uneven thickness and appearance. The effect; I couldn't slice butter more easily! It was a bit hard to keep the piece from skidding around under the heavy plane since it was almost round. Small cleats were superglued to the board I use as a base. 

Maybe a vacuum fixture would work. But could I be arsed? Probably not.