Argapa 100 under the knife

I’m a bit behind in posting, but will catch up. These pics are from last week. 

My eight string soprano was made from mahogany, all of it. A great wood for most parts, but the bridge was a wee bit too soft for the string pull. They ate their way into the wood and it was time to deal with it. 

I rigged a cardboard protective layer. I was still at the cottage, hiding from the scorching sun. 



With my Japanese model making saw I carefully cut two slots just beside the holes. 



With a thin chisel of the mortise chisel kind I cleared the wood out between the saw slots. My plan was to laminate a few black maple purfling strips together with ca glue and fit that into the slot. 



And here it is in place. I planed it down together with the surfaces of the bridge. It was a bit high and will be better now. 



Cool innit. Looks like it was meant to be this way. 



I strung it up with a set of Aquilas and a set of Worth browns, so the strings wouldn’t sound the same. A bonus was the ebony/ivory thing going on at the bridge was carried over to the rest of the uke. 

A few glamour shots

First I want to show the gloss on Argapa 100. I modified my shellac finishing method, it got a bit awkward in the middle of the process but the result is good. 

I took a bit of a leap with the string spacing at the bridge, but it works perfectly. Quite easy to imagine the strings colliding but I don't think they ever do. 

And still, the flat bottom shape that I made nine years ago on my first soprano to facilitate glueing the end block. I like it, it's mine and I won't change it. 

Andy's reso, number 95. With pinstripe fret markers. 

The Dr. Who motifs on Kris's uke, no. 96 (a very nice number, you can turn it upside down).

The behemoth mother of pearl inlay project and f-holes for Brian, a.k.a Popmonkey. 

Brian's again, and Argapas 98 and 99. The latter is for Mike Krabbers and the first is for a hitherto secret customer. 

The pearl inlays on Mike's uke are made from the scraps from Brian's fretboard. The shark bite is Mike's own. 

And the last, Argapa 101, with the domino fret markers. To the right in the pic you can see a part of the very well managed register of all ukes I've built. 

The greatest of days..!

I started the day by just repeating the steps from yesterday. Each reso took maybe 30 minutes to set up; bridge, coverplate, nut, nut slots and then strings. Stringing one up is almost always a bit disappointing, when it first comes under tension the cone knows not at all what to do. It makes muffled groans. But already after a few minutes under the load of the strings, strings that are stretching to find their pitch and tension, it wakes up. The difference is quite big and most welcome. 

After doing five resos I squeezed in Argapa 100 at its destined place in the increasingly long line of instruments. Then I made the last reso, stamped all headstocks with logo and serial number and got the wine and crisps out. Li was at the grand premiere. Remember Li was at the beginning as well, check this link out:

http://argapa.blogspot.se/2007/08/uke-7.html

And this type of shot was harder than ever to take, I had to stand on a chair. 

The Argapa 100, and the first soprano taropatch I've made. Same mahogany as the first soprano, and a few others. Peghed tuners to save weight but the headstock got pretty heavy anyway. 

And here they all are. Once the strings have settled I'll make a demo vid, and then it's time to flood the market! Five are going to the UK and one to the US. 

Fret work

I decided to bite all remaining bullets and dedicated the available time this weekend to dressing frets. This I thought was the last chance to let a few of the six ukes drop out of the race and be finished later, I really need to ship one or two so I can get money for some stuff. 

But I chose not to. I've forgotten the order between them and don't fancy choosing between the people who've waited so patiently for such a long time. 

If you remember me fretting these you'll remember the nicely bevelled fret ends that I made with the new file holder. That's great but the fret ends do have sharp edges and a bit of burr, so I need to round them off with a fret end file. One of the tools from Stewmac that might seem expensive but is nigh impossible to live without once you've tried them. 

And do the maths - 7 fretboards, 14 frets on each, 2 ends on each fret, 20 strokes on each end... It took a long time. 

My improved fret pressing clamp left the frets almost completely level. I found one or two that was a wee bit high but chose to press them in some more rather than filing them at the top, you get a flat surface that needs to be dealt with using a fret crowning file and it is somewhat boring and nerve wracking at the same time. 

But the frets need to be polished anyway! The fret erasers from Stewmac are quite good. I like them but many people don't. I bought the whole set of grits, ranging from 180 to 1000 in five steps. Each eraser takes me about 20 seconds. 5 erasers on every fret, that's 100 seconds per fret. 14 frets on every board, 7 fretboards... My shoulders hurt. 

But now they're all done and I moved on to laying out and making the screw holes for the cover plates. And my lovely wife helped me with the secret Argapa detail (that ensures the superior sound and performance of my resos) while I was polishing frets, so that's taken care of too. What's left now is

- tuners

- nuts

- fiddling the biscuit (no smutty innuendo intended).

- strings

Wrapping up

The great resonator project of 2016 spills over into 2017 I'm afraid. But delusional as always, I think there's not much left. First pic shows me applying the last or possibly second to last glaze coat, and it does seem to work better than ever. A thinner cut of shellac appears to be the trick. 

Here are the two I did yesterday, one of cherry and one of walnut. Both take the finish well. 

And here's the group photo, I've done the remaining four resos and the Argapa 100 today. Can't wait to buff them out and install the hardware!

And speaking of hardware [writing, I am not talking to myself as I write this... wait, who said that?] I have to finish that stringholder blank. I planed the surfaces with my no.1 plane, and the corners got so sharp I cut both my hands on them. Now with blood and the brown shellac gunk on my fingers I look like an old junkie. Good thing I'm not going to town on errands - oh shit I am. 

Anyway I eased the corners a bit, hopefully without making the shape all mushy. It would have cut into any players strumming hand so I had to. 

And happy new year to you all. Fanx for reading this blog, both of you. Feel free to share, like, retweet or whatever you young people do to promote a cranky old bloke's cranky old diary. 

More waiting, and distractions

I bit the bullet and bought a new random orbital sander. The idea of sanding the finish on these seven ukes was too much to bear so I ordered it earlier this week. But DHL tried to deliver it at noon on Friday so naturally I missed it. I'll try to change delivery address to the office.

So, this weekend won't go down in history as the great flattening and polishing weekend. Instead it might go down as the not so great bass restoration weekend. But first let me show you some ukes. 

Argapa 100, destined to be the odd child of every schoolyard it dares to tread. A taropatch soprano, who'd've thunk it? I'm rather pleased with the fret markers as I'm sure you are as well. Double strings slightly out of sync. 

And here they all are, with a rather heavy coat of shellac. I slathered it on with a brush so more a spirit varnish than polishing this time. You get why I need that sander. 

But the sander isn't here so I turned to my short scale Teisco bass. I will swap tuners, electronics and the pickup. I already did a re-fret job and made a new pick guard. And changed the bridge. So it's not much left of the original (it was already heavily altered when I bought it).

Here's the back of the headstock. I filled some screw holes. 

And I read in Dan Erlewine's book on guitar repair: "... guitar electronics is one area of repair where a novice usually doesn't do much damage." Those are good news since I'm a bit of an amateur when it comes to soldering and stuff, but look at the state of it now. It can't get any worse. 

Finish prep

The last couple of weeks have been thick with dust. After sanding all seven ukes with the Abranet sanding block I told you about I have used the rolling pin sander to get at the waist areas, and after that I went over all of them with a random orbital sander that begs to be replaced by a better model. But it works, sort of. This is when I round over the edges on the body, and I take care of any knife marks left on the neck. 

So today I drilled pilot holes for the tuner holes and ground some blonde shellac flakes for one of the maple bodies. For the rest I'll use some darker shellac but this one is requested as blonde as possible. We'll see what happens. 

The grinder is some small herb chopper but cuts the flakes as if it was meant for it. 

I had to make a few extra hooks, and checked that they all hang freely. Wouldn't want to stand around with a wet uke in one hand and have to fabricate a hanger with the other... again. 

And then, the payoff. Walnut especially can look quite dull after scraping and sanding, so I had to take this pic. It's alive!*

*Also the title of one of the best live albums ever. 

Back at work, slotting fretboards

Got home from South America with a cold, and that is a drag. I've been well for over a year and forgotten what it feels like. Now I know; it feels like shit. 

But I won't let that stop me. I slotted all seven fretboards. 

First I made one of the edges perfectly straight with a Record no.5 plane. 

Look at the shaving. Then I put the slotting template on with double stick tape and ran the boards over the narrow blade in the crosscut jig. 

The jig has two rails registering on either side of the table of the, erm, table saw. 

And here we are. I'm very pleased with how the slots came out on Brian's heavily inlaid fretboard, it's easy to mess the letters up with the frets. 

I'll proceed with fretting next, but need to make a couple of tools first. 

Back glued on Argapa 100

After fitting the back braces to the sides I grind away at the body with my radius dish. It looks rather threatening compared to the tiny uke shell, but its weight really helps. 

Then, with a suitable insert undee the neck at the nut end, I get screws and cauls out. 

Then clamping the back down with the screws and wingnuts. Now would be a great time to link to the posts with the radius dish and the screw system, and I'll try to do that on the computer later. 

Since my solera is by the wall I check for an even squeeze out with a mirror. It looked perfect. 

Binding Argapa 100

Stopped attaching the neck at the last minute when I remembered I promised you binding on this one. I went with a plain black single ply binding strip, to match the plain black rosette I made. I started by scoring the width and the depth with a marking gauge and my home made gramil. 

As always when using the gramil I consider doing the whole job with just that but I caved and went with the router. 

After nipping out to the cottage, as I'm sure you see by the background and the daylight. 

I set the router for a wee bit deeper than the binding width and planned to scrape the sides down to the strip. That way I can get a consistent width all way round, which is really important for thin binding. 

Then I cleaned the rabbet best I could with a chisel, and then glued in the binding strip. 

Then scraping the binding down to the top, and then the sides down to the binding. I don't have pics of the last step. As you may see the oven was getting warm, dinner was had and the final steps were taken at the dinner table after dessert. 

Attaching necks

After the joyful experience with the disc sander last weekend (a sentence never before written, I'm sure) I was well prepared for drilling and attaching. 

It might be my experience piling up, but no doubt the clean and exactly made skeletons of this batch help - it was so much easier than it was last time. And since I attach the neck before glueing the back I have relatively easy access to the screw. 

So far four reso necks, and that spare neck did come in handy. One of the necks had a heel that was too delicate and the drill went through when I drilled for the barrel bolt. I smacked on a faceplate and the spare will be good to go. 

And I went ahead with Argapa 100 too, but stopped just when I reached for the glue. Did I say I was gonna put binding on this one? Well now's the time, it's harder if the neck is in place. Avoided future senior moment by storing barrel bolt and screw in the neck. 

Technical relapse

Earlier this week, after glueing all the faceplates on, I started looking at the heels. The face of the heels. At the end of the necks. This anatomical vocabulary is quite fun innit. 

But here's a pic of the faceplates. Or headstock veneers, I don't know. 

Anyway the heels. This is a process I've done loads of times, I make a shallow recess with a sharp gouge, then I sand the heel on a slab of metal with sandpaper glued on until the angles are right. It takes me about half an hour to do. 

But the gouge was dull. 

And during my work with the faceplates I discovered I have carved seven alder necks, not six for the resos. I still think a spare neck might come in handy so I'll keep it in the production line for a bit. But the idea of fixing seven necks, plus the eighth for Argapa 100, with a dull guage took the fun out of the workshop. 

So I brought the whole load to the cottage where the larger workshop is. In the background you can see dad's boat. 

I set the disc sander at 89 degrees (which came naturally when aiming for 90) and went at it. 

I hollowed the face of the heels a bit on the end roller on the belt sander so it wouldn't rock. 

And checked the angles on the granite plate. 

And after thirty minutes flat all eight were done! Now on towards mounting them.