Back glued on Argapa 100

After fitting the back braces to the sides I grind away at the body with my radius dish. It looks rather threatening compared to the tiny uke shell, but its weight really helps. 

Then, with a suitable insert undee the neck at the nut end, I get screws and cauls out. 

Then clamping the back down with the screws and wingnuts. Now would be a great time to link to the posts with the radius dish and the screw system, and I'll try to do that on the computer later. 

Since my solera is by the wall I check for an even squeeze out with a mirror. It looked perfect. 

Backs are on

Glueing the backs is easy. I just pare the heel down so it's flush with the body on two of the resos, then use them as clamping cauls for each other. I had a layer of fleece fabric as padding between the backs, and sent a thought of thanks to the me who wrote "B, INSIDE" on the backs so I knew which went where. 

A monster not with two backs, but two faces. A Janus uke, anyone? 

And then the excess trimmed off on the small bandsaw, carefully so I didn't saw the neck off. 

Hhe batch is still moving in unison as we close in on the fretboards. 

Binding Argapa 100

Stopped attaching the neck at the last minute when I remembered I promised you binding on this one. I went with a plain black single ply binding strip, to match the plain black rosette I made. I started by scoring the width and the depth with a marking gauge and my home made gramil. 

As always when using the gramil I consider doing the whole job with just that but I caved and went with the router. 

After nipping out to the cottage, as I'm sure you see by the background and the daylight. 

I set the router for a wee bit deeper than the binding width and planned to scrape the sides down to the strip. That way I can get a consistent width all way round, which is really important for thin binding. 

Then I cleaned the rabbet best I could with a chisel, and then glued in the binding strip. 

Then scraping the binding down to the top, and then the sides down to the binding. I don't have pics of the last step. As you may see the oven was getting warm, dinner was had and the final steps were taken at the dinner table after dessert.