Bracing work

The cavaquinho will have steel strings, and I know this will means a higher tension. So I made the braces a bit larger than I would on a concert ukulele. 

They are made from quarter sawn spruce and the two outer ones I made lower and wider than the one in the centre. First pic shows how I rough shape them before glueing, but with the solera now free to move around (before the workshop overhaul it was mounted on a wall) I chose to save most of the shaping til after glueing. 

And my new go bars. The grey ones are fibre glass tubes from a collapsable wardrobe, sliced in half. The black ones are from a tent I found in the trash. Both kinds are stronger and more consistent than the wooden ones I used before. 



With chisels and a variety of tiny planes I shape the braces and bars. Tap tone shows promise. 

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. 

Closing the piccolo, carving lute neck

Things happen at a comfortable pace. Before going away to dinner yesterday I continued in the workshop.

I mount the back braces in the lining before glueing the back on. Not common practice at all but it suits me. The body is clamped down on the solera with a caul at the soundhole, and the neck is also clamped down with a shim at the nut end to give it the correct angle. This isn’t visible in the pic. 

The back goes on and is clamped down with wooden slats that bend and conform to the shape of the uke.



I check for squeeze out on the far side with a mirror. Everything looks good.



Then I turned to the lute-ish neck. It won’t fit easily in my carving jig and the cherry wood was really hard to carve, so I tried a rasp. Not a tool I use often but I must say I understand now that many builders do. I roughed out the profile at the nut end in no time, and went on to the heel to get both an entry and an exit point for the spokeshave.

The heel would have been very tricky with just the knife. With the rasp it was fast and easy. 

Then on to the spokeshave. I did use a more massive drawknife as well to negotiate some reversing grain.



But the whittling knife was necessary to get rid of the rough surface left by the rasp. The pencil line at the heel is a guesstimated cut line but I’ll deal with that when the body comes together. The mock lute will have six strings so the headstock will be fun to solve.