Slow moving

Well summer ended and wurk began. And what a formidable beginning it was - these last couple of weeks have made me question my sanity, a load of career related decisions, and what I want to do with the rest of my life. 

But anyhow, we got some lumber freshly sawn delivered from the sawyer. Surprisingly, a lot of the boards are quarter sawn and a few might wiggle their way into future instrument builds. In some years. After drying. There was more than I show in the pic, this was half way through stacking it temporarily under the roof. I’ll build a proper structure for it as soon as I get the time. 

Travel ukes, planing the soundboard

Briefly back at the home workshop, I hogged out the curvy bits with the small bandsaw and made the straight cuts with hand saws. 

Starting out the soundboard was 3.2 mm. I want to take that down to around half. This was the main idea behind the new order of oprations, as it was risky to use the router plane for the last bit when the remaining wood was thin and fragile. Well it turned out this was hard too. 



I used a well fitting caul under the soundboard to prop it up, but fit some padding on it. That was a mistake as it flexed and the plane took more from the edges than from the middle. I might be able to save the ash blank but it’ll probably be a keeper. 

The walnut blank turned out more even but had some rather difficult reversing grain, so I had to use the Veritas cabinet scraper to remedy some tear out. 

Fugly traveller blanks

With what I’ve learned from the four first travel ukes I’ve made, I set out to build a few more. Having access to a pillar drill in the large workshop makes drilling a few hundred holes bearable. The bit stops a couple of millimetres short of breaking through, counting the brad point. 

Then I clean the edges up with chisels. My set of nice chisels have taken quite a lot the last weeks and I’ll sharpen them all today before I crack on. In the pic you can clearly see the marks left by the brad point on the drill bit. 



Then my newly sharpened router plane took the lovliest shavings off of the bottom of the recess, removing the brad point marks. With how the blade is shaped I took extra care not to undercut the sides. 



When the recess is made I reconnect the two halves of the perspex jig, fit the protruding one in the hole and score the outline of the instrument around the large contour half of the jig. Or is it a template. 



Each recess takes me one hour, after drilling out the bulk. So I made two yesterday and have three more ahead of me today. Two walnut, two cherry and one ash that grew on this here plot of land. Ann is close by and that is a good thing.