Best selling wood projects - Building a Ukulele Part 7 Body Assembly

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The various parts are sloooooowly coming together - a right shoulder injury is hampering my activities mightily at the moment.  It is taaaking .... sooo ...... looong to get the smallest tasks completed.

Serendipitously, it gives me an even greater appreciation of the courage and abilities of the competing para-olympians.  I really admire those athletes! Two weeks to go - bring it on!

OK, here are the bits.
Lets have a go at putting things together.

The body has had an embellishment added to the toe - in the form of the same burl veneer as the headboard.  Two reasons for this - to tart it up a bit, and provide a little balance in the design - and the second reason is to cover a badly matched join where the two sides met.

By making it wedge shaped, the filler piece can be cut oversize, slid into place and glued - then the top and bottom trimmed off.  Looks OK I think.

Ill be fitting the back first, so the back linings are attached.

Linings for the back are glued in place - hooray for clothes pegs!

Here are the back linings after drying.
Ill have to attach the neck before the top goes on, to give me room to clamp the neck tenon in place.

Ill fit and glue the back next, as the design of my neck means it has to be attached from the top, and the fretboard over the top of the soundboard.  Do these later.

I hoped to have more done than this, but ...... life intervenes .............
.... the shoulder, doc - the shoulder ...................owwwch!

Until next time ................

Love life and live ..........
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Best selling wood projects - Making A Boat Paddle Tenor Ukulele Part 5 Catching Up

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Oh my, where has all this time disappeared to?
So much to do around here and the ukulele build has been on the back-burner.
Our home is a large log cabin construction with a fully painted exterior.  The LOML, in her spring cleaning mode, started an outside spruce-up that turned into a full exterior house clean. A huge job!

We last painted the exterior in 1996-97..............
You can see whats coming...............  Now that it is clean lets re-paint, she said.  OK, I replied.  I really love painting .............. hahaha

 (this male king parrot landed on my painting trestle)

Soooooo ........... guess what has occupied my leisure hours of late - we have been painting, and painting and painting ...............

Oh, there was also the rehearsals for the concert by the Tele Point Ukes and Singers.......................

.............and the concert itself..................

trips to Young.................

.............. and Sydney - and my sons engagement to wonderful Edwina .............

........the party ..............

........... gardening .........

................. lots of gardening .........

...... babysitting ............... lots of babysitting ............

............ end of year parties and wrap-up dinners, as well as.........
..........school concerts .................

(......everybody was Kung-Fu fighting ......................)

.................. and woodwork........... well, bits and pieces.
I have found some time to cut and shape the gusset blocks for the ukulele body as well as lay out the fretboard and make a start on the neck.
Ill get back to that in my next post.

Soooooo ........ we are back up to speed.
 Every blessing to you and yours for this season of Xmouse.
May you find some peace...... and in doing so, add a little more joy to the world.

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Best selling wood projects - Building a Ukulele Part 8 Neck Fretboard and Bridge

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Righteeeooho - here we go ho ................
The neck glue-up passed without incident, and it is now ready to accept the fretboard.

The scale on my tenor ukulele is 17 inches.  This determines the distance between the edge of the nut and the peak (break line) of the saddle.

With the soundboard temporarily in place, I can measure for the position of the bridge that carries the saddle.  I do this before gluing the top onto the body, so that I have some room to clamp the bridge during its glue-up fitting.  Too hard to do this after the top is fixed to the body.

There will probably be glue squeeze out during this, so I mask off the area around the bridge with tape. This also acts as a good locator for the position of the bridge which is bound to slide around a bit on the glue.

Once done, the soundboard and bridge can be set aside to dry while I mark out the fretboard.

The positioning of the frets is critical, and the good folks over at Stewart MacDonald have provided a free-use fret position calculator - mucho gratias my friends.

Armed with a printout of my 17 inch scale for 18 frets, I am good to go.
These have to be marked on the squared fretboard before tapering it, so that the fret positions are easily done with a try square. It is more accurate to use a marking knife for the fret marking, as it minimises the inaccuracies of pencil thickness.

The fret positions should all be marked from the edge of the nut, and not marked in increments from the previous fret mark.  Doing it the second way only multiplies any inaccuracy with every fret mark.
So, the ruler is clamped to the fretboard and all marks laid out before scribing them.  I have carefully ticked off all the fret marks as I go, to ensure I didnt miss any.

 
Ill cut them next, before tapering the fretboard to suit the neck that I have already built.

Now, the fretwires themselves have a very narrow seat, and so a very narrow-kerfed bladed saw is needed.  I tried several of my saws, before finding that my Veritas dovetail saw is just about perfect - narrow kerf, and very little set on the teeth.  It is a rip saw of course, designed for cutting dovetails along the grain, but serves very nicely as a crosscut saw in this instance.

 To help with the saw cuts and to keep them on track, I made up a little square saw guide.
Works a treat.


Got to wait a little, while glue dries.
Next time, Ill attach the top - and after that sets, Ill fix the fretboard.
Nearly finished - yippee ....................
Still got some time left for some strummin practice -
Uke group night tonight - FUN!

Love life and live .........................
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Best selling wood projects - Woodies With Goodies

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.............otherwise known as the Hastings Woodworkers Guild Annual Exhibition.
Yep - its on again.  A triptych of tumultuous, timbered transactions in October - our three day Show.
The lead-up to this event is months in the planning, and involves lots of community events in the weeks and days beforehand.

Apart from the advertising and the publicity, there are, of course the exhibits.  Generally, these are the cumulation of a years work since the last exhibition - but often there are special pieces made just for the show.

My humble contributions this year are two exhibition pieces - the finished Amish Jelly Cabinet ............................

........................... and my tenor ukulele.

In the sales section, I will have some washroom cosmetics and towel rails ..........

............ and some planter stands - tall and short.

I wish my son was home so we could exhibit his just finished verandah bench. On ya lad!

There will be the old tools stall - which includes show, swap and sell from among the members of the Club, as well as antiques and collectables.  My old mate Ross, of Sunday Market fame, will be there - with bewildering bygones to bargain, barter or buy.

The show is looked forward to by all, and has in the past attracted around two thousand visitors to view our endeavours.  Maybe this year we can break that number.
Hope so .....................
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Best selling wood projects - Building a Ukulele Part 1 Timber Selection Layout

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My first Ukulele - here goes ..................

Ive been ruminating on this for weeks now, and its time to make a start.  After much research, and not a little searching for appropriate timber, Im actually in the starting blocks and ready to go.

Since this is my first Uke, I am going to treat the whole build as a learning experience.  Join with me and watch the progress and the mistakes as we travel this luthiered road together.


Timber Selection

I have acquired some very nice timber for the project(s) but have decided to keep the better pieces for later builds, in case I stuff up badly on the first attempt. 
Some tonewoods that I have acquired for the tops and the body includes:

• Huon Pine
• King Billy Pine
• Tasmanian Myrtle
• Tasmanian Blackwood
• Black Heart Sassafras

Heres what Im going to be using this time around:

The soundboard will be western red cedar.  These pieces have been ripped down from some ship-lap boards from my brother in laws kitchen - left over after his recent renovation.  They are very old and nicely quarter sawn.

The fretboard, headstock and bridge will be made of Australian rosewood.  As this is my first ukulele, I am bound to make some mistakes in the build.  Better to do that with less exotic timbers, and save the good stuff for later ukeuleles.

Just to refresh your memory on uke nomenclature here is a quick revision:

The back and sides will be ripped from some figured sassafras, and the neck will be made up of some laminated straight grained sassafras as well.

The linings will be made from paulonia - because I found a piece in the woodpile - and it is light and should prove quite satisfactory.

Making The Linings

Linings are the curved strips that adhere to the sides and assist the gluing of the soundboard and the back of the ukulele.  These can be purchased from music suppliers, but I decided to make my own.

Ill use the table saw, and this is what I will end up with before cutting into strips:

To get to this point, I made up a little jig which is screwed to the mitre gauge.  It is simply a pin hammered into the face of the mitre gauge - 5mm from the cut line.

The cuts are made in the surface of the piece of paulonia so that they leave about 1/8 of the thickness remaining.  These multiple kerfs allow the linings to be bent, to follow the curves of the sides of the ukulele.

After each cut, the kerf that has just been made is placed over the pin, and the cut repeated 5mm away.  This continues until the board is mostly kerfed.  There will be a small amount at the end that wont be done, as it is too small to be supported by the mitre gauge - and too dangerous to attempt without it.

Once the kerfing is complete, I cut this kerfed board into thin strips on my bandsaw.

Here are the finished linings:

The linings are easy to bend, and will be put aside until the body assembly stage of construction.

Next step will be to rip the pieces of sassafras for the sides and back.  That will have to wait until next time.

This is going to be fun ...... cant wait ........

...... and happy woodworking to all ....................
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Best selling wood projects - Pre Owned and Pre Loved

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Since my last post, I have been asked many times where did I find the pre-loved tools that I use.  I would love to be able to say that they were passed down through my father.  Sadly, I only have his hand saw - a Warranted Superior 26 inch 8 point cross cut. It is very much like a D-8 and was probably made by Disston.  And I love using it.

Others, I have found in all sorts of places.  Garage and boot sales, Sunday Markets,  second hand and bric-a-brac stores, online and other auctions - to name a few.

It helps enormously to have a working knowledge of hand tools before looking.  Familiar names of quality tool makers, and the styles of their construction are a walk up start.  Often you can recognise a quality nameless tool because of its obvious parentage.

Here is a little gem that I found today - pre-owned but definitely not pre-loved.

Sad, isnt it.  If you saw it on the street you would probably step over it.  But .......  made by Robert Sorby, and in a useful and rare size 1-3/4 inches wide, this chisel was worth trying to save.

First step was to get rid of the rust and scale, and see what damage to the steel lurked beneath.

 

Hmmm ... lots of pitting to both sides.  Pitting on the top is ugly and deep - but is only cosmetic, pitting on the bottom is a real problem.  At this stage, the back is so bad that only the bottom half will be given help, as this is where all the cutting action will take place.

 

The pitting is quite deep here, and to hand flatten this would take days.  I used an electric linisher with quite coarse grit to begin the flattening, keeping the blade cool during the process so as not to affect the temper of the steel.

Here is the back of the blade after  introducing it to the linisher.  A big improvement, but the scoring from the coarse grit now needs to be removed. Also, the cutting edge has been radiused in the past for some reason and has a distinct roundness.  I dont want this rounding, and will grind the edge back to square.  This will necessitate re-grinding the bevel as well.                                                Many modern woodworkers now approach the back flattening, by working their way through four, five or even six ever-finer grits.

I dont believe that this would have been the practice for craftsmen in the era of these tools.  It simply would have taken too long, and Im not even sure that such a range of grinding grits was available to them in any case.

 I am using only two stones.  The first is a commonly available at any hardware store combination oil stone - coarse/fine.  First, the coarse side.  This is used to begin removing the linisher lines and also to shape the bevel.

 Next, the finer of the two sides of the stone.  To lubricate, I use a kerosene/oil mix of around 5/1. Works well for me, and doesnt clog the stone.  

Once again I work on the back and the bevel, but this time I add a micro bevel. I have become accustomed to the position of my hand and wrist relative to the stone when doing this, and I do it now from muscle memory without checking.  I guess this is the benefit from hand sharpening a few thousand times over the last forty years.  It would be an advantage to anyone starting out to use a bevel guide.

Finally, I use a very fine white arkansas stone that was passed down to me from my wifes father.  It is very hard and very fine.  Same lubrication as before.

And thats it.  The blade is good enough to use and will cut well.

Of course the chisel needs a handle, and this piece of local Eucalypt will be suitable.  I dont know what species - maybe white mahogany, but it is sturdy timber and I know it will turn well.   Ill have to leave that until another day.  

This same process can be followed in resurrecting all chisels.  Saws and planes are another matter, and Ill address those in the near future.

Happy woodworking to all.

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