New shape for the concert

When we bent the sides the other day they were a bit short. That would easily have been dealt with by making the shoulders a wee bit narrower, and I’ve always thought my concert mold was a bit wide at the upper bouts. But I went ahead and changed my template, and the inlay piece for my solera work board. So from now on my concert ukuleles (never mind we’re building a mini guitar and a cavaquinho right now) be more elegant. 

Here’s the side piece for Johan’s mini guitar on the solera. What we need now is a soundboard. 

But before you can plane a spruce top you need really sharp planes. So I sharpened my no. 4 and no. 3 Stanley planes on the water stones. 1200, 2000 and 8000 grit, followed by a quick honing on the strop. 

And it worked a treat. You just don’t get a surface like this with sandpaper. 

Argapa: next generation

So. Remember that me and Johan did some heavy resawing with the frame saw a while back? Well all parts except for the tops are sanded to thickness and yesterday I managed to pry Johan from his phone for an hour. And we bent the sides for his mini guitar. 

It went really well, he got the idea and felt when the wood gave and when it didn’t. I thought I was gonna bend the sides for the cavaquinho I’m building for my friend and drummer, but I’ll do that on Sunday I think. 

Here are the sides, or more correctly; here’s the one piece rim Johan bent. 

Amplifiers

I have some wood that needs planing, and the workshop is cluttered and needs a big clearing up. In fact, I will have to clean the bench before I plane that wood. So of course I veer off at a tangent instead of doing that. 

These two aluminium boxes will be miniature guitar amps! And I will play my bass through one of them and it will sound like a chainsaw cutting into a beehive. I put masking tape on the fronts to mark the holes. 

I use a step drill / Devo hat to make the holes. The amp modules are from ebay, the speaker cones are from the trash. Apparently my neighbours never tire off chucking speakers out. 

Done. They are better than my previous attempts. 

Now. That wood to plane. If only Incould see the top of the workbench...