A mesquite fretboard

I keep saying I’m gonna tidy up the workbench but I never really get around to it. And there is that half finished ukulele that needs sorting, so I tell myself if I finish that I can clean the bench so much easier. 

So I found the mesquite fretboard blank I chose long ago, and trued one edge on it. I put my Stanley number 6 upside down in the vise and ran the board along it. 

I put the fretting template on the board, using the tape and superglue trick. The underside of the fretboard is cleverly marked “ner”, which means “down” in Swedish. The plywood contraption is a sled for cutting the slots. 



Et voila. For some reason the slots weren’t as deep as they should be, something is up with the saw or the sled. But I just deepened them with my handsaw. 



I taped it and marked it the centreline, and from that I marked the tapering edges. I scored the edge lines with a marking knife...



... and pulled the excess tape off. Then I planed the edges down to the remaining tape section. I like using a large plane for this, the length and the mass really help in getting the sides straight. 



And I did a lot more today. But I will post it in bits, kind of bad form keeping quiet for a month then publishing mega posts with way too many pics. Thinks I.