Morning bender

Me and the kids took it a bit easy this morning. They played with their stuff and I played with mine, and bent the sides for a tenor, a piccolo and the miniature which will get the neck from yesterday's post.

It took me about 40 minutes and everything turned out really well. There might be a few spots that need a touch up but I've found that easier to do after the wood has relaxed a bit in its new shape.

All three will be cherry by the way. I think cherry is an excellent wood.

The two (almost) circular shapes will be a couple of (absolutely circular) bowls that Ann and I are making.

Neck from waste

That last cherry soprano I made, with the pinstripe neck, this is the chunk of wood I got left after sawing the neck blank to rough shape.

It nearly went into the pile of firewood I carried over to my friend's house last weekend. But I saved it just because it was so pretty.

And look, there was at least one neck left in there! A small one anyway, I'm making another miniature uke. Scale length will be around 200 mm. It'll probably go to the raffle at Hollesley this summer.

Partially censored frontal pic

I know they look strange with the paper covering the secret inlays. But other than that, they look quite good I think. And what's even better, they sound really good.

I didn't have to use a ring under the coverplate like I did on Brian's reso, I made the neck angle different this time.

(On Brian's, I made the neck angle to suit the coverplates I paid for but never got from Delta Resonator Cones. So I bought these and they turned out to be lower.)

But that ring looked great. Maybe slightly better than without one. If I were to start production for real, or send drawings somewhere I'd consider including a ring like that.