Palace ukulele?!

Check out the ancient wooden boards that are torn out from a palace in Stockholm. The palace was built in the 1690:s and is currently being modified. Some material, however valuable, will have to go.

But does it go to waste? Nah, not if the Argapanator can help it. When I get the time I'll clean them up and see if it's possible to resaw bits of them to soundboards.

Ripping neck blanks

I must have mentioned my Pax rip saw before. Today I used it to roughly shape the neck blanks for the resos.

In the first pic you can see the small cuts I make with a chisel to start the saw cut. The rip saw has very large teeth and can jump around a bit without these incisions.

The second pic shows the saw halfway through the second cut.

Some tools do the job so fast I wish I had more to use them for, and this is definitely the case with this rip saw - 3 or 4 minutes of sawing just isn't enough!

Last weeks going-ons

Since I bent those sides on monday morning, I've done a bit more. The Argapa soprano no. 1 excluded of course, it's just there for some measuring.

From left: the koa concert top with its nifty rosette, a piccolo neck, a piccolo top braced and with the rim glued on.

And then the major effort, the resonator sides are glued to the plywood skeletons. This is very very fiddly to get right with the bookmatched butt and the waist going into the curve of the plywood parts. But making the sides in two halves is a lot easier than making one-piece rims for these. I've done that a couple of times and swore a lot.

And to the right is a couple of neck blanks of ash and mahogany for the resos.