Here Come Old Flat Top…

Day 3.

We started the day by pulling the top from the go-bar deck and sanding the sound hole reinforcer and the bridge plate down to a small thickness. After that we cut the soundhole with the flywheel cutter. Total moment of truth. The good news is we didn’t fornicate up the sound hole. It turned out great!

Next up were the transverse braces. First they get thrown on the shallow dish and dished out to arch the top slightly. The soundhole reinforcer gets marked, notched, and chiseled so the braces sit flush against the sound board. From there it’s glue and clamp the braces onto the top. We then glued the center strip on the back. While those dried, we got neck blanks ready.

Mike uses Honduran Mahogany for his necks. High quality wood, I might add. He starts with a 4×3 chunk and cuts it into 4 pieces for, oddly enough, 4 necks. After cutting them on the bandsaw, they are jointed to make the faces parallel. Back to the bandsaw to cut the scarf joint.

After that the end is trimmed twice to get 2 blocks to be used for the heel. He has a swank jig (3 actually) for gluing up the headstocks and heels at the same time. While that glue dries, it was time to plane and scallop the transverse braces.

Planing was not so bad as not much needs to be planed before you go after it with a chisel. The chisel, however, took a bit more coordination and skill than I have, but slowly I increased my competence. Once the transverse braces were shaped it was time to cut and glue the fan braces. The fan braces went on similar to the transverse braces with the exception that the braces were ground out on one side to make room for the bridge plate.

Then it was time to work on the back. We sanded the back strip down then arched the braces. There are 2 back braces, one between the waist and one between the lower bout. Glue and clamp them and then it’s off to shape and scallop the fan braces. Things seem to move fast at this stage…

Once the fan braces are scalloped, it’s time for any touch ups, glue squeeze out cleanups, etc. Then it’s time to glue and clamp the top to the sides. We started with the head block, first with a small clamp to center, then 2 larger cam clamps to actually secure the whole of the top of the head block. Then the same with the tail block. After that it was simply a matter of following the curvature of the body without distorting the sides or top. While I can see some definite potential for some serious fornicating merde up, it went quite smoothly and easily. I admit, having someone who knows what they’re doing helps immensely.

While I waited for the top to dry, I shaped and scalloped the back braces. Once the top was dry, we unclamped it and threw it on the router table and trimmed the top down to size with a flush cut bit. I accidently let it get away from me near the top and check out some of the top. Fortunately for me it didn’t dig in or tear out into the body, so I was saved much heartache. Next time I know to bloody hang on tighter!

Mike then drew the taper in the sides to give the bottom of the uke its shape. Once done, he sanded it down with the edge sander.

Then it’s off to the deep dish and sand the sides where the bottom meets to level them. Then Mike used the random orbital to sand the top and smooth the sides out. When the sides are bent, the curl in the koa “facets” for lack of a better term. Smoothing the wood out ensures a nice feel, but mechanically more important, it gives a clean edge for the binding cutter to follow. Finally, we glued the lining on for the back to attach and cut the headstock down to a straight and even thickness.

It’s bed time. I’ll try to get Day 4 posted tomorrow, although I haven’t written any notes yet, either. The body got finished today and and the neck rough shaped. More later. Hasta!

I’m so-oh-oh tired…

My mind is on the blink…

Too tired yesterday to post so here goes Day 2.

I rough scraped the top and back to remove the bulk of the glue with a cabinet scraper. Then ran the top through the drum sander to do a quick clean up

Then I marked the center line, and used the template to draw the rough outline of the uke using a bearing as a spacer to get some excess wiggle room.

Off to the bandsaw to rough cut the shape. Then the sides are placed in the mold and the centerlines are marked for trimming. Trimming is achieved by eyeballing the line on the bandsaw blade and placing the top face down while making a cut.

It worked perfect since the sides are (in theory anyway) straight as referenced to the top and the blade is 90 degrees to the table. I thought it worked out quite slick. Mike has definitely impressed me in the “simple but elegant” solution area of many aspects of uke building

From there the sides go back in the mold with the bottom of the sides/uke flush with the bottom of the mold. Clamp the waist using the turnbuckle clamp and the head and tail blocks are ready to be clamped in. They get clamped flush to the top as the head block is shorter than the tail block.

The Rosette. I decided on a (I don’t know maybe 1/16th”-3/32nd” wide, maybe a touch more) band of bloodwood surrounded on either side by 2 thin lines of black. Mike has this cool modified/hybrid flywheel cutter he’s machined that has a 1″ clear acrylic disc about 4″ in diameter to keep the cutter from walking. Unfortunately, we measured incorrectly and blew the rosette pattern on my top. Fortunately, we had a back up Fir top. While I have to admit I preferred the colouring of the original top better, the new top has grown on me, but I digress… After the rosette channels were cut we installed the black plastic lines and glued them in. After that they were slowly trimmed flush with the drum sander. To get the bloodwood to bend, Mike boiled some water and essentially made spaghetti. It went in without too much fuss after a couple of initial dry fittings and some minor sanding of the rosette material. (before boiling, obviously) After a couple quick passes of the drum sander to smooth things out, we thicknessed the top with the drum sander down to 0.070″, although it may have been 0.075″. I forget which.  (Did I get pictures of any of this?  No…)

That done, it was time to mark the lines for the transverse braces, fan braces, and the bridge plate. Then over to the Go-Bar deck to glue up the sound hole reinforcer and the bridge plate. After that, I took the glued sides still in the mold and sanded the top edge on the wide radius dish to prep the sides for lining. Gluing in the lining strips went surprisingly easy with the help of many notched clothes pins augmented by rubber bands.

By that point it was too bloody late to head back to San Bruno for dinner with friends, so I had Mike drop me off in downtown Berkeley where I had an overpriced, but delicious Spinach-Mushroom Ravioli for dinner.

Ok, I have notes from Day 3, but am too tired to type them up, so maybe I can catch up tomorrow. Mike is hoping that at the rate we’re going, we can wrap up by Friday. That would certainly make for a mellow Saturday before I have to head home.

Isn’t It Good Norwegian Wood…

Day 1.

Bloody hell did I learn a lot. Hopefully, I’ll remember some of it…

Forrest was kind enough to give me a lift down to the BART station. The sound of the BART is freakin’ *AMAZING*!!!! It’s like bein’ in Star Wars. Every time you go into a tunnel it makes the Tie Fighter scream. I’ll have to record it before I am done with this adventure…

Mike’s 1 hour discourse on tonewoods turned into an almost 3 hour discourse. I am still not sure if it’s because I am that slow at making a decision or he was trying to milk out of me a better comprehension of what I am looking for in a uke. I think he was having some fun because he did smile through most of it, and I actually understood a reasonable amount of what he was trying to explain to me about the qualities of the different woods in the ukes we were comparing. Well, at least from a theoretical perspective. Actually verbalizing it was another matter entirely. Finally, I was able to discern somewhat between the Fir topped, Primavera body uke, a Koa Kamaka he had on hand, and my little Koa topped, Mahogany body uke. If nothing else, I enjoyed the conversation. Even if it was longer than he had anticipated. I also got to look at the Left-Brained Lutherie book, which while I certainly wouldn’t admit to understanding a lot of the book, I certainly understood more than I expected.

I had been toying with the idea of the all Koa uke, because it’s *THE* traditional tonewood, it’s got a nice sound, blah, blah, blah… but ever the one to change my mind at the last second I opted for a Koa back and sides with a Fir top. It certainly would never have occurred to me to use Fir for the top on my own, but his concert sized fish uke has a great sound, (plus it’s cute as all get-out) and I thought it would be fun to live dangerously as it were…

So, as far as actually building the thing today; we glued up the top and back using the most ingenious system I’ve ever seen devised. It involves tape, of course, because what can’t be improved upon with a little judicious use of tape? The hardest part for me was using the planer on the shooting board to square up the edges. Considering my experience with a planer is limited at best, (mmm, make that nil) it went remarkably well. I could see how after a few ukes I could cut my time down to about a tenth, though. Well, as long as I stayed focused for the duration.

We also thicknessed and bent the sides, which believe it or not is much easier than I have been led to understand. Thicknessing was a pretty nifty operation. I got to learn how to read a barrel micrometer, it’s a nifty tool designed by people with a fetish for thousandths of an inch. It’s not 0.07″ (seven hundredths of an inch) it’s 0.070″ (seventy thousandths of an inch), yeah, because there really *IS* a difference, right? It took a few minutes to wrap my head around that one as I am used to shortening things up. I could see if you were working in an industry that relies on a margin of error in the thousandths of an inch, keeping your measurements on the same scale would be copasetic. The thickness sander is pretty cool. I couldn’t imagine trying to achieve proper thickness with a set of planers

As far as bending goes, wet it with a spray bottle then slip it between a couple stainless steel sheets over a preheated thermal blanket an’ gently start squeezing the center caul down onto the waist. From there slowly crank down the bouts always listening for the ping that tells you you’re starting to crack, which is, of course, not good. I haven’t seen the results yet as it was time to go before the sides had cooled, so there’s still time to have fornicated it all up. Still, all in all, a lot smoother than the reports I’ve seen on bending using the Fox style bender.

No work tomorrow as Mike’s busy, but I’ve been tasked with picking out a rosette design. I’ll have to dig through his photos to get an idea. I was thinking maybe just a simple loop of wood around the inside of the soundhole. Simple might look best. No gaudy abalone on this baby…

I took some photos, but haven’t yet worked out how to upload them. Ok, so I haven’t really tried, either. But that’s not really the point…  (Update: 10/03/08.  Photo uploads have begun, yeah!)

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds…

Well, more like Georgie in the Sky with Diamonds, but I have arrived.  It’s late-ish so this’ll be short.  The flight was uneventful, which is the best kind in my esteem.  It’s too bad I didn’t find a book to bring…

On the upside, I scored a ride to the BART station tomorrow, so I won’t start the day off with a 2.5 mile hike.  Tomorrow I should know much more about ‘ukulele’s.  We shall see, we shall see…