Best selling wood projects - Making A Boat Paddle Tenor Ukulele Part 5 Catching Up

Best selling wood projects

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 - Making A Boat Paddle Tenor Ukulele Part 4 Sides Bending and Fixing in Place

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Bending the Sides to Shape

I use a small bending iron and an atomiser spray.
 

 

The heat from the iron and the sprayed on water act to steam the timber making it soft and pliable.

 Mango is surprisingly easy to bend and it took far less time than the sassafrass of my first uke.

Assembly

The scrap pieces that were cut from the mould now come into play as clamps - holding the sides until dry.

I have positioned the end block in place with a mark down its centre line to keep it correctly positioned.  This will later be glued and clamped.

The waste-clamps are expanded by using nothing more than an expanding toggle, normally used for tensioning wire.  The top shaping blocks are forced apart with nothing more than a simple wedge - see below.

The end block is made from a small piece of Australian cedar - light but strong and with good acoustic properties.  It has been radiused to the same curve as the body at this point.

The two sides meet at the bottom of the body and are held in place by the glued end block.  As you can see, the two sides dont quite meet at the centre line.  I stressed about this in my first uke for a day or more but was never able to establish a clean middle join.
I dont worry about it now, and after the glue dries I will cut a wedge shape exactly in the middle and insert a decorative piece of African blackwood as a feature.

These two pieces will meet at a corner - a potential weak point in the body.  I have decided to strengthen the corner and eliminate the weak join with a small gusset that will also show through as a feature.  African blackwood again. This will come a little later.

Ill glue in the end blocks one at a time. Here, the bottom end block is glued into place.  The top block will come later on and it will have a mortice cut into it to house the tenon on the end of the neck.
Things are taking shape nicely.

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