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!)
