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.
