Travel ukes, a new way

I made a jig for laying out the contour of a travel uke a while back. Now I have some pieces of walnut that want to be turned into ukes. One of the ideas behind the jig is to make the hole and recess first, while there is still a lot of wood surrounding it. If I cut the outline first the endgrain by the but is very fragile. 

So the jig is made from two parts, one is for laying out the hole. 

And this is something you don’t see often in the dungeön, me testing on scrap!! I tell others to do that but rately can I be arsed to follow my own advice. I drill using a drill stand, lacking a drill press in my home workshop. 



Once the depth is dialled in I go for the real piece. The drill is modified to leave a smooth bottom in each hole, I shortened the brad point and the spurs. 



I roughed in the upper edges of the hole, screwed the jig back together and pressed the small part into the hole. Then I can scribe around the large part to get the outline of the instrument-to-be. 



And here’s the router plane smoothing out the bottom, and making it deeper in small increments. My thought is to get the hole nice looking then thinning the soundboard with a smoothing plane from the front face. 



At this moment the thickness was 2.3 mm, I went to around 1.8 in the end. 

Scattered mind, random progress

Last week, in the larger workshop, I picked out some walnut and tried the perspex template for laying out some future fugly travellers. 

And more recently, in my home workshop, I made a top for Li’s ukulele. It’ll be spruce with a mahogany rosette. I am very fond of my rosette cutter. 



After glueing in the mahogany strip I level it with chisels and scrapers. 



Then I cut it out with my Knew concepts saw. 



I needed braces so I split a square piece of spruce in three parts with a rip saw. 



And after some faffing around it’s all good. 

Neck making, continued, and a template

I had an hour this morning so I continued sawing those neck blanks. First pic shows the second of a nested pair getting its headstock defined with the Pax rip saw. The left over wedge will come in handy, I reach for wedges all the time. 

I have three sopranos on the bench so I stopped at four neck blanks. The last pair can wait a bit. They’re pretty rough so some (a lot of) planing is necessary. 



I chose my no.5 jack plane for the bulk of the work. Long enough to be precise but nimble enough to adjust the surfaces quickly. 



And here they are, really straight grained and pretty mahogany. They will be perfect for the ukes I’m working on. 



But that’s not all. Remember the Fugly Traveller? Sure you do. I wnt to make some more and I need a template. With a sheet of 5 mm plexi / perspex I laid out all the lines. 



And I cut it out on the band saw and cleaned it up with files. More to follow!

Neck making

I need some soprano necks. I have a chunk of mahogany that I took home from the cottage and the larger scale workshop, remember the bandsaw there is up shit creek with no sight of a paddle. I’ve thought of pestering the wood shop teacher at Li’s school - I can see their bandsaw through a window when I walk past - but never got around to it. So tonight as I stood with a so far rejected neck blank of Spanish cedar I thought, feck let’s just saw this to necks and be done with it. 

So I laid out six profiles, nested as they usually are. 

I need holes later, to let a narrow saw blade turn, I found easier to drill them while it was still a large piece. 



Then rip sawing between the pairs. I tried my other new old rip saw, the pointy one in the background, but it needs a bit of sharpening. So I let loose my trusty Pax saw which made short work of the task. 



Then I cut the blanks to length with my father’s old cross cut saw. Despite the plastic handle it’s a great tool. 



Then the only tricky cut so far, going between the blanks with a bow saw. I bought the blades and hardware from somewhere but went cheap and fitted them on an old frame I had. Li helped me take the pic. 

Not quite done but enough progress for tonight. 

Prepping for fretting

My piccolos don’t have a separate fretboard, as I’m sure some of you know already. This means the neck is set with an angle to get the strings clear of the soundboard and bridge. It also means I saw the fret slots after attaching the neck, since it might get shorter at the heel end as I’m making sure the surfaces match. 

This is the jig I’m most proud of. It’s held in place by the styrene rods that will become the fret markers. 

The first slot is where the nut will sit, it won’t be a slot for long. 



Paring down the fret marker rods. The neck has a lovely grain, it popped under the wash coat of shellac I put on before sawing. 



To properly seat the fretwire I relieve the edges of the slots with a triangular file. A couple of passes is enough. You can see the difference in the pic, slots to the left are done. 



Then I turn that first slot into a stepped ledge for the nut. The nut is held by the strings and a dab of glue. As always, my chisel is super sharp. Look at the cross grain shavings. 

Almost done. Here I come in from the other side to finish it off. The surface is crisp and shiny, no sanding is required. 

I really don’t mind abrasive tools for stock removal (as in a drum sander) or sometines rough shaping (as with the rasp on that neck blank), but for final surfaces an edge tool will always win. Here I’m chamfering the fretboard edges with a miniature plane. 

Fitting the neck

I started fitting the neck after some scraping and sanding. Close to the head I ran into some reversing grain so I had to use sandpaper more than I usually do for the final shaping. 

First I hollow out the heel a bit, with a gouge. 

And, demonstrating the versatility of the Zyliss vise, I clamped the neck carving jig with the jaws upside down and taped some sandpaper on it. Then I can drag the neck across, constantly checking the angles. Most of the hollowed out recess disappears during this stage but it being there prevents the neck from rocking. 

With low tack masking tape I mark out a centre line, which I don't have - this is a one piece top. 

And the jig I rigged up for a neck re-set a while back tells me I'm in the ball park. The jig was built for using on a neck with a fretboard but it works sort of. 

The drilling jig for the barrel nut and screw, also clamped in the vise. 

And the same jig used on the body for the matching hole. I had to enlarge this last hole a bit to get the neck perfectly aligned, but it won't matter. 

Cutting fret slots

With the saw guide as a go / no-go gauge I planed and whittled the neck to final width and taper. The neck on this one is unusually beautiful, with rays and specks and a deep lustre. After a couple of wash coats of shellac I drill the holes for the styrene rod that will become fret markers, after doing some service as guide pins for the saw guide. 

Like so. Sometimes I clamp the guide but the fit was good enough without it this time. 

I set the depth stop on the fretting saw for the depth of the tang plus four mm for the acrylic in the guide. 

And away we go. I had to sharpen the saw a while back and it's still good since then. So it only takes a few minutes. 

Checking the depth with a pricey gauge from stewmac. I love their stuff but they do sell a separate tool for every single step and task. 

The last cut defines the nut location and I pare off the wood behind it, blending the surface from square ledge into the slope of the headstock. 

But why the saw guide and the back asswards way of slotting the neck in this manner? Because I don't have a separate fretboard on these ukes, and I can't determine the slot positions before fitting the neck since that involves so much faffing about, effectively shortening the neck. And I really want the 12th fret to be exactly at the joint between neck and body. 

Is there a better or smarter way to do it? I don't think so but you might have ideas. Answers on a postcard, address is 

The Argapanator

The dungeön

Sweden

Slotting for frets

I fit the necks to the piccolo sized ukes before slotting for frets. Since these are Swewaiian style ukes they won't get a fretboard, instead the frets are seated directly into the neck. I want the 12th fret to be exactly at the neck to body joint, a location that is largely unknown before the neck's in place. During fitting and alignment the heel end might get shorter, and the joint may well be off square as long as it all lines up and any skew is within the width of the fret crown. 

So, I've made a fret slotting template that goes on the neck as you can see in the first pic. 

The saw I use is from Stewmac and has a depth stop. The perspex in the jig is 4 mm, the tang of the frets are 1.4 mm so I set the stop to give me slots deep enough without being too deep. I don't mind a miniscule gap under the tang, that's better than a poorly seated crown. And it's good for sucking in some ca glue too. 

Thirteen slots cut. The one at the top isn't for a zero fret, I'll use it for creating a ledge for the bone nut. You can also see the jig from underneath. 

And here they are, remarkably similar to real instruments. I'll give them a wash coat of shellac before fretting. 

Yes. I know I've shown all of this previously. But that's the point of a diary innit, repeatedly and endlessly mulling over simple things. I do give you new chisel pics now and then don't I. 

Setting a neck

The walnut tenor turned out to be flat and square where it needed to be flat and square, and its alder neck was also dead easy to align. Usually I do quite a lot of sanding on the mating surfaces to get the centerlines perfectly straight and I also shoot for either a slight neck angle or a flush surface from neck to soundboard. 

The final neck angle I set when I glue the back so as long as I don't have a negative neck angle at this stage I'm content. 

And the joint between heel and body doesn't have to be perpendicular to the centerline. It was exactly so on this tenor but a miniscule angle won't matter. (I'm talking about angles that could be measured but hardly seen, and certainly not after the fretboard goes on.)

But this time everything was aligned after a couple of minutes, so onwards with drilling the holes. I use a screw and barrel bolt connection and since I made this drilling jig I get consistent and accurate results every time. I chose to shim it this time because the heel is rather slim, but that only offsets the hole from the face of the heel. (Oh, the anatomical nightmares of luthiery.)

Pointy end at centerline and away we go! The jig fits the Zyliss vise beautifully. 

The neck gets two holes since the barrel bolt is there, 10 mm for the bolt and 6 for the screw. I used to make my own barrel bolts to get down to 8 mm, but that was hard work so now I just buy the standard ones. 

This last pic is from the dry fit. I often make the hole in the neck block 6.5 or 7 mm to get wiggle room but that wasn't necessary today. Now off to the office. 

New fret slotting jig

I use my small Proxxon table saw for slotting fretboards. If you're looking for one and can't find it, the Microlux brand is very similar (exactly the same) and that's carried by for example Micromark in New Jersey. 

I use the saw for few things other than fret slots, for example slotting bridges. But really not much. 

I have a fretting mitre box from Stewmac and some longer scaled boards I've cut by hand because the old jig was a bit weak and wobbly. But doing it on the machine is quicker, more accurate and what's not to like about that. 

First pic shows the old jig, I've used this for all my sopranos up until now. 

But recently I was contacted by a fellow builder asking what blade to use and that reminded me that I'd promised to make a better sled jig. I made a sketch for him but when I made this I made it a bit simpler. The plywood is some old shelf I found in the trash, dead flat and lacquered. It has rails on the underside that go against the edge of the table. 

I pared and planed the rails from super tight to smooth and steady, then I raised a 1.5 mm blade through the plywood base. I put a shim in that slot and set a square against it so I would [theoretically] get the fence square to the blade. But the lacquer caused it to shift since not even superglue grabbed fast, so I had to fix it with a rabbet plane. 

That was easy though and the result dead on. 

But..! Then I changed to the 0.5 mm blade and that one is tiny. It's made for an even smaller saw but comes up 10-11 mm over the table on this one. And how thick was my plywood? I got a bit tired - had I been so dumb that I didn't think of that? Hell yeah, I was dumb. I turned the height screw frantically but it bottomed out before I saw the blade. Darn. But the locking nut on the screw wasn't completely out, I turned that as far as I could get it and again raised the blade. 

Success! It comes up around 1.6 mm, just enough for the fretwire I use. And it works brilliantly.