Neck work

Time to get a handle on this situation, innit. I found an old mahogany neck blank kicking around and it will be a great match for the body. First pic is from measuring and marking out. 

Then I start carving with a two-handle drawknife, wicked sharp. I can’t find the neck carving jig, it must still be in a box somewhere. But the vise I got from Chris works. 

The knife goes down through the end grain like through [really dense and slightly brittle] butter. 

Trick photo - I can’t really carve holding the neck and the knife in the same hand, but wanted to show the shift to the wee knife for refining the shape and profile. 

I really like the faceted shiny surface from carving, but not all do so I finished it off with sandpaper. 

Are we fast approaching attaching the neck? I didn’t think I would remember this much but expected a lot more fumbling. Let’s hope this won’t jinx it. 

Binding

Hiya. The spruce top is on ans as I prömised I will bind it to protect the rather soft edge. A bit daunting as I haven’t done it in years, but I found the tools and the wee machine. Considered using the large trim router but opted for the Dremel with the Stewmac attachment. Sadly I forgot to take a pic of the setup, but it involves me sitting outside on a damp janky table clamping the uke between my knees and routing the channel slowly in several shallow passes. 

First pic shows the channel after a bit of cleanup with a file. 

The tortoloid binding is really stiff so I pre-bent it on low heat to get it to comply with the body shape a bit better. 

Doesn’t need to be any more precise than this although I suspect it could be. 

I used thick CA-glue. It works provided you rough up the inside surface a bit. I did that with a hacksaw blade, and I also chamfered the bottom inside corner of the binding strip with a knife so it doesn’t get in the wah of any microscopic pieces of crap in the channel. 

Low tack masking tape to make removal easier. It usually sticks rather well on account of the superglue. 

 


If you like it you should have put a string on it. I think.  

And after a couple of hours I dared remove the tape. Next up is scraping it flush to the top, then I guess I should start looking for a neck blank. 

Soundboard (top anyway)

Hell-o, I’m back in Sweden after a stint in Mumbai and I’m back in the workshöp. My favourite customer S has been quiet lately, but he told me before that he considered a spruce top on the reso. I haven’t done that before so I’m game. Pic shows me planing it with a number 5 jack plane. 

It was a while since I prepared a top for a reso but I was confident I remembered the long and rather complicated sequence of steps <— foreshadowing

Then laying out the contour and marking for the holes. I’m really proud of my locating templates, the only easy way to find the center of the holes in the skeleton. 

And I get that the last pic doesn’t explain it totally so here’s another one that should help you out. 

And out came the marvellous rosette and circle cutter! Of course the holes should have been cut before I glued the wee locating nibs on. First mistake due to hazy recollections of ”the long and rather complicated sequence of steps”.

It’s possible to do it like this but next time I hope I do things in order. 

And on to mistake number three! (I won’t bother you with the second one but it involved sanding the edges of the holes before glueing the top on.) The third mistake was forgetting to glue the mesh screens in before the glue-up. But it went alright apart from poisoning myself with CA accelerator. 

And here is the result. Not much left of the spruce soundboard we started with but hey, it’s what’s needed. I will add binding as I tend to do with spruce topped instruments, leaning towards a single ply plastic one. But not black, that would be too stark a contrast. I hope I can find some tortoloid strips, they were around a mere four years ago.