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 - A Commission Ukulele Interruptus

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Been away ....................... back again - and itching to get on with the tenor ukulele build.
However ......................
.............a project for a client has interrupted the music of uke building for the moment.

Re-shaping the World -
A Desktop Globe With A Wooden Frame

Here it is - (well it is very similar, I have dismantled the one Im working on) - a desktop earth globe, whose metal and plastic frame is to be replaced by one made from Australian rosewood.  This has exercised my creative cortex for a while now, and I have finally come up with a solution that is both simple and practical.

The main part of this construction is the equatorial ring that supports the globe, and is in turn supported by the legs.  Rough cutting the internal circle left some spokeshave work to do, to get it smooth.
I love rosewood, it is so easy to work, and soooo forgiving.  Planing around the flat edges of this circle meant that there would be many times when I was planing against the grain - and across it.  I started with my Millers Falls number 6, but soon had to reach for a smaller plane.  Those shavings in the background are all from that process - gorgeous!

A small low angle block plane handled this easily.  This is the little Lie Nielsen violin makers plane that I bought for the ukulele build, and it is perfect here.

For the lower circle that will brace the legs, I had to rip down to thickness from a suitably sized block of rosewood.  It could have been planed to thickness, but I wanted to keep the scrap ripping for ukulele parts.  In planing, all that is produced is shavings, where - by ripping - I can salvage some timber for later use.
Here, the Millers Falls squares the edge before I start on the table saw.

After running each edge over the tablesaw blade, I finished off with my Tyzack Nonpariel 6 point ripsaw.  Ripping to thickness by hand is not one of my favourite pastimes, but this saw really sings - and it is as close to a pleasure as ripping can get when I use it.  A truly beautiful saw is this one.

It might be Nonpariel, but it did a good job of cutting parallel in this case - heh, heh!  (my kids hate my jokes!)

As you can see, I marked the circle on the wrong face (or I ripped the wrong face - take your pick) - easy fixed though.

The lower, smaller ring gets the same treatment as the upper ring, and there is plenty of work using the round bottomed spokeshave.  This is the Veritas model, but there are plenty of others equally as good.  Because the shave must go with the grain, and the grain changes so often in a circle, the workpiece had to be re-positioned in the vice many times over the course of this smoothing.

The legs are my own design, and are meant to complement the curves found everywhere else on this globe stand.  They will stand wider than the original model for added stability.

Trial fitting before glue-up.  Trusty 4 inch Silex square to the rescue.
The legs are fitted to the top ring with dowels and secured to the bottom ring with brass screws. No these arent brass - Im still waiting for them to arrive.

Glue-up time.  Glue-up takes place with everything in position so that there are no regrets when it dries.  The lower ring (top one in this view) can still be removed after the glue dries, but provides the tension and the bracing for the legs at the moment.

A coat or two of finish - and were done.

Now - lets have a crack at the soundboard for that tenor ukulele ..................
Bring it on .................!





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Best selling wood projects - Building a Ukulele Part 3 Making A Rosette Cutter For Soundboards

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I dont have one, I need one, I have no idea where to buy one - so Ill make one.

After the soundboard is assembled, and before I fit it to the body, I will have to cut the inlay for the rosette, as well as the sound hole itself.  So I need a circle cutter.

I found a couple of scraps of jarrah which will serve nicely, as well as a sliver of tool steel that has been kicking around the bottom of my tool box for decades.  I cant remember where this originally came from, but it will make an ideal knife. 
Other blade materials could be an old jigsaw blade, or a piece of hack saw blade or bandsaw blade - ground to shape.

I ground a skew before establishing a bevel, then sharpened on my oilstone and honed on white arkansas.

My first step was to cut a piece from the side of the scrap - the same width as the knife blade.  This will be used for the wedge to hold the blade in place, as well as the sides of the body.

The knife will be positioned towards the end of an arm that slides within the body, and is held in place by a second wedge.  More on this later.

I start with the housing for the blade and its wedge, and make sure that this is finished before shaping the arm that carries it.  This is important, as it gives a solid block to work with while cutting the housing.

The housing is cut just like a through mortise.  After marking it out, I drill out some of the waste - from both sides toward the middle (to stop tearout at the bottom), which would happen if drilled all the way through from the one side.
The knife side is that end of the housing closest to the body, so this has to be vertical.  The outside end of the mortice is sloped to take the wedge.  Dont reverse these, as this puts the knife too far away from the centre point, and limits the size of the minimum circle that can be cut.

I use a Narex morticing chisel and one of my bench chisels to clean up the inside walls.  The Narex is made in the Czech Republic, and while cheap to buy, is well up to the task of handling this hard old jarrah.  The bench chisel is a Pexto - nee Peck, Stowe and Wilcox -  one of the best from the golden age of US tool manufacturing, and up there with Swan and Witherby.

Once the housing is finished, the sliding arm can be shaped.  I keep the offcuts to be used in the body and the wedge, as they are exactly the same width as the sliding arm.  Two pieces from the first ripping and the offcuts make up the body - glued and screwed.

Here are the assembled parts before gluing into place.  The shape will be refined after the glue dries.

Cut the wedge for the knife, and glue and clamp.

Insert the centre pin, (a broken drill bit) and - voila - all done!

So ............... how does it cut ................?

Not too shabby at all .....................

Love life and live .......................


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Best selling wood projects - Recycling packaging timber into kitchen utensils

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Timber is being used to freight goods all over the world every day. As packing cases, crates, dunnage, and other forms of packaging. Viewed as low value timber, some if it is just that - but some of it is absolutely beautiful stuff just waiting to be utilsed and given a higher value life. When I am teaching woodworking hand skills, one of the first projects we do is to make kitchen chopping boards, often from this material. I do a lot of work with recycled and salvaged timber. Part of what I also hope to do is to help people understand our incredible wastage as we dump so much timber into landfill. Nice wide pieces of packing crates offer wonderful opportunities to use sawing and planingskill to create beautiful and functional items. Why not?

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????Check out the pic of this treasure trove of timber at a Waste Management Facility. A wood dump, predoninantly comprising of packaging and dunnage. For a person who is keen on recycling timber, this pile contains exciting possibilities and great potential. I pulled some aweom wood out of this pile which I recycled, wood which had come from all over the planet. Some of it was known to me, and much of it is of species unknown to me.Someone once asked how we know that the packaging timber has not been treated with nasty chemicals, as we are using it for food purposes in its new life. It is a perfectly valid question. So for your interest I thought I would explain how I usually tackle this matter in relation to the safe recycling of packing materials. There are international agreements pertaining to the prevention of the spread of nasty stuff around the planet. So I usually look for the appropriate symbol which is often found somewhere on the exterior of the packaging. 

This symbol is the ISPM 15 mark. Some of this information below I obtained from the Australian Governments Quarantine and Inspection Service.

ISPM 15 is the International Standards for Phytosanitary Measures Publication No. 15 (2009): Regulation of Wood Packaging Material in International Trade.

ISPM 15 was developed to address the global spread of timber pests by regulating the movement of timber packaging and dunnage in international trade. ISPM 15 describes phytosanitary measures to reduce the risk of introduction and/or spread of quarantine pests associated with solid timber packaging material (includes dunnage).

The United Nations Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) addresses plant quarantine through the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC). The IPPC is an international treaty administered by the FAO and implemented through the cooperation of member governments. Australia is a member or contracting party to the treaty.

Timber packaging and dunnage bearing the ISPM 15 mark is certified as having been subjected to an ISPM 15 approved treatment.

An ISPM 15 compliant mark looks like this:

What the IPPC certification symbol means:

• XX: represents the two letter ISO country code (e.g. AU for Australia, US for United States, NZ for New Zealand, GB for United Kingdom).
• 000: represents the unique certification number issued by AQIS to the treatment provider or wood packaging manufacturer. Inclusion of this certification number ensures that the wood packaging material can be traced back to the treatment provider and/or manufacturer.
• YY: is the treatment abbreviation where:
• - HT is the code for heat treatment to a minimum of 56o C for a minimum of 30 minutes
• - MB is the code for methyl bromide fumigation.

The letters DB represent debarking. DB may be added to the abbreviation of the ISPM 15 approved treatment. For example, HT DB represents heat treatment and debarking and MB DB represents methyl bromide fumigation and debarking.

More of this info can be obtained from the following website:
http://www.daff.gov.au/aqis/import/timber/ispm-15-faq#What

Methyl Bromide is worrying stuff. Methyl bromide is a broad spectrum fumigant toxic to fungi and other micro-organisms. I am told that all garlic imported into Australia is required by the Australian Department of Agriculture to be fumigated with Methyl Bromide! Meanwhile, effective 18th March 2010, the European Union have banned the use of Methyl Bromide as a container fumigant. So Australian Quarantine (AQIS) will apparently no longer recognise certificates of fumigation from the EU where Methyl Bromide treatment has been used.
Methyl bromide is the most potent ozone depleting substance still in use today. In 1991 it was identified internationally as a chemical which contributes to the depletion of the ozone layer. Accordingly, the Australian manufacture and importation of methyl bromide was to have been phased out completely by 1 January 2005. However, the uses of methyl bromide in quarantine pre-shipment (QPS) and as a chemical feedstock are currently exempt from the phase-out. Hence it continues to be used in many places around the world as a fumigation method for timber packaging and dunnage, and is an approved treatement under ISPM 15. (except in the EU now?)


If the timber from packaging has been heat treated, then I generally reckon it is OK for recycling as kitchen chopping boards, cooking spatulas, chop sticks, bowls, and wooden spoons.. If it has been treated with methyl bromide, then I will not use it for food purposes. However I will use it for furniture and other wooden items. Incidentally, man-made wood derived materials, like plywoods, particle boards, MDF etc (which were bonded together using heat, pressure and glues) are not required to bear an ISPM 15 mark. The manufacturing process kills off any fungicides, insects or other nasties which may have been harboured in the raw materials prior to manufacture.

So next time you are pulling apart a pallet or crate to utilise that wonderful resource of timber or sheet material, keep an eye out for the ISPM mark. Now you will know what it means, and know a bit more of its story. I hope that this info has been helpful to those who wonder about recycled wood.
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Most of the chopping boards made by this group were made from packaging.

Sometimes a real gem turns up in the packaging pile. I am no expert on North American timbers, but I believe the stick in the picture below is American White Oak. The ISBM 15 Compliance Mark stamped on it tells me me its from the USA and it was Heat Treated. Delicious.

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What a score! A piece of American White Oak, 8"x1" x 6 long. (200 x 38 x 1850mm)

????So next time you see a pallet or crate in the skip bin or on the rubbish tip, have a close look at it. There is a chance you may need to liberate it into its next life as a kitchen utensil... If it is an exotic piece of timber, look for the ISPM 15 Compliance Mark. If you can find one, it offers both useful information and intrigue!

 

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Best selling wood projects - External Stairs from Recycled Timber

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Aahh!... another set of stairs...   Amid all the different types of woodwork I do, what I enjoy about building stairs is the brain challenge they provide - particularly in the planning and setting out phase. One of my latest jobs has been to build a set of external stairs for a client. The task was to plan and build a set of stairs which would fit into a particular space on an existing building which was undergoing significant renovations. The stairs would comply with the Building Code of Australia, and made primarily from recycled jarrah.

Thats the space available to build the stairs ... in front of the red brick wall.

View from the top looking down. The structure would have to keep 1.5m off the fence line.

?Planning the job.
Having taken measurements on site, it was then down to the planning stage - which always involves doing scale drawings on my trusty drawing board. I have never got into CAD drawing on the computer. I still like the old "Technical Drawing" techniques using a T-Square and pencils on a drawing board.
The first place to start with planning a set of stairs is to know the total Rise - the distance from the top floor level to the bottom ground level. In this case, allowing for the new ground level which will be built up to the same height of the underside of the back door sill, the total rise will be 2.5m. This divides readily into 15 steps, each with a rise of 166.67 mm. That rise fits within ergonomic convention. The next thing to determine is the "Going" - the horizontal depth of each step from nosing to nosing. The accepted rule is: (2 x Rise) + Going = 585 (or up to 625mm.)   I decided to have a Going of 260mm, which fits within the range OK.
With the Total Rise, the number of steps, the Rise and Going all established, the length of the flights can be determined. Drawing this to scale would give me the angle of the stringers and help me to visualise how it will fit within the space. A landing will need to be included, as this divides and separates it into two flights going in opposite directions. There also had to be the required minimum standard headroom where the lower flight approached the ground while coming under the top balcony.
After a lot of drawing, calculating, brain-waves coming in the dead of night, meetings with the client and 3 drawing versions later, I believed we had hit on the answer of how to make it fit in the space available and my client was happy too.

Gathering the timber and starting the construction. 
The treads would be easy. Three sticks of timber dressed to 90 x 45 (and nearly 900 long), with gaps of 8mm between, would give a stair tread of  286. With a 260mm Going, there would be a 26mm overhang of the nosing over the back of the tread below. Nice. These sticks would be ex 4"x2" jarrah. In domestic buildings these were normally used for floor joists, rafters and often ceiling joists. Much of the 4"x2"s I had in my stocks came from a house built in 1930. After seasoning for 80 years, this stuff is dry!
?

4" x2" material cleaned up and ready to be machined to size.

?  As much as possible, gum veins were avoided in the selection process, the timber docked just overlength, de-nailed, scanned with a metal detector, scrubbed down with a wire brush, straightened and squared over the buzzer, and machined to the required 90 x 45 through the thicknesser. Three of these per stair tread.

The stringers were a problem. After searching round the salvage yards, I would be unable to find the jarrah suitable to make the stringers. (Stringers have the treads housed into them and make up the sides of the stairs). So I had to buy the material new. The required 10" x 2" jarrah I purchased was pre-dressed and what they call prime grade. Scary stuff really, as I had to pay over $650 for the 4 sticks I would need in order to make the 2 pairs of stringers! Ouch!

The decking would be easy. By ripping 4"x2" jarrah sticks down the middle, the two halves are each machined to 90 x 20mm.  A number of these I was able to make at 3.2m long, enough to go the full length of the decking. The arrisses were shot off with a block plane, and the decking boards pre-coated with oil.
?

A 4"x2" piece of jarrah ripped down the middle and opened out. Fantastic colours and interesting nail holes coming in from the edges. It will be machined into beautiful recycled jarrah decking. 

?  The top plate or apron of the landing would be ex 8"x2" jarrah, dressed to about 45 x 190mm, and the landing floor joists were ex 6"x2" jarrah from salvage. The landing would be supported by 6 galvanised steel legs set in concrete, and the jarrah posts above would be machined to 100x100mm. These took a lot of hunting down - from salvage yards and other sources. I was fortunate to get 4 posts from an old 6"x6" jarrah power pole! The 120 x45mm handrails would also be obtained from the 6"x2"s.
All nails and other fixings used would be Hot Dipped Galvanised. The finish to be applied to the finished timber would be Cabots Natural Decking Oil.

The construction process started with making a set-out board of the stringers, giving me the angles and dimensions of the tricky ends of the stringers. This info was then transfered on to the stringer material and the?? two pairs of stringers were then made at my workshop and pre-finished with a couple of coats of oil.

The Stringers were laid out in pairs, marked out, and the tread housings cut.

???The treads were then all made and cut to size ready. The two flights would be too heavy to lift if assembled, so I decided to do the assembly on site.? With the flight components made and the landing materials organised, I moved to the site to build the landing. When the setting out on site was completed, the holes were dug for the steel posts. Using lots of big cramps and big sticks of timber, all the prepared posts were suspended in their holes, plumbed and held in the right positions. My son Ben was giving me a hand that day, and it was a big day! Ben operated the electric cement mixer and we did the concreting job. Six posts, rock solid. The following day I would do the concreting of the final two, supporting the base of the lower flight.
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One of the steel posts suspended and cramped in position in its hole, awaiting the concrete.

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The top stringers were also suspended/supported  in place to ensure the landing position was correct. While working from the drawings, sometimes it is good to check "in the flesh". 

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The lower flight stringers fixed in place, with metal spiggots at the base set in concrete. The concrete will later all be buried under sand and brick paving.

? Completing the landing.
?With the steel posts set in concrete and the landing apron or top plate being bolted to the steel as the jarrah posts were inserted into them, the floor joists were then added. These in place, the decking was then nailed down.
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Decking nailed down and completed. Thats a cake of soap on the stair tread - to lubricate the 4" galvanised nails used in landing construction.

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Top flight treads fitted in place. Handrails and balustrading still to be added.

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Landing done. Stringers in place, most treads installed. Time to cut posts to height and add balustrading. 

The jarrah posts were installed "over-long", so that they could be cut to a finish height after the transitions had been worked out - ie. where the flight handrails meet the landing handrails at the newel posts. These transitions would be calculated and modified ensuring a smooth transition as well as compliance with the minimum requirements under the Building Code of Australia (except for the lack of infill under the balastrading, which someone else would be doing.) While the scale drawings would give a good indication, the measuring and marking of the real thing in place would be most accurate. ?

Making and Fitting the Handrails.
With the landing decking completed, it was time to get on with the handrails. The customer hadnt quite decided what balustrading to have - but will probably have stainless steel horizontal wires. Thats someone elses job. Other than the posts below, I dont do steel. Out of interest, to comply with the BCA, balustrading must not be able to have a 125mm (5") sphere pass through any part of it. Horizontal handraisl must be a minimum of 1000mm high, etc. At the commencement of the job we had agreed I would only to install the newel posts and handrails, so that was what I was doing. I had made the handrails from ex 6"x2" jarrah ceiling joists. Nice straight sticks too, which I had machined into 120 x45mm. This gives a 10mm overhang on each side of the 100mm posts.

One of the newel posts at the transition from landing to top flight. Thats the tenon on top awaiting the handrail which will be housed onto it.

The posts were cut to length with tenons on top, and the corresponding housings cut in the underside of the the hand rails. The interesting part was the angled corners of the landing handrails. In one of these brainwaves I have in the dead of night, I resolved how to do the joint... a beautiful mortice and tenon joint. In fact, a stub tenon with a haunched tenon either side of it. And it worked a treat!. All this was done on site. My trusty tenon saw cut the tenons on top of the all the posts, and the tenons on the ends of the handrail returns on the landing. Good to see a saw live up to its name. I was going to take photos of the joint components before I glued it up and fitted it to the posts ... but once again I was so hooked into what I was doing that I forgot and just assembled and glued the joint. Sorry about that...  Love that glue - Titebond III.

Nice mortice and tenon joint! 27 degrees off 90. Theres a long haunch and a stub tenon in there.

??

Thats the other corner. Another very tidy joint, the same as the other end.

Anyway, I was very pleased. The haunch mortice was cut with a slot cutter in the router, and the deeper mortice for the stub tenon was chopped by hand. The tenons were all cut by hand. It was a winner.?

Job completed.
When I had completed construction, I brushed the whole structure down and gave it one more final coat of the oil finish. It looked like a million dollars. I then gathered up my tools, cleaned up the site, took a few pics, and drove away. Satisfaction is such a nice warm feeling. Heres a few pics:

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View from the top looking down and across.

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View down the top flight.

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View of the bottom flight from above.

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The ground level is yet to be built up and brick paved. The height of the bottom step allows for this. 

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This pic puts the stairway in context. Soon there will be a swimming pool in the foreground!

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View from the ground level back door.The galvanised steel legs will be painted a colour similar to the jarrah. 

On the joys of jarrah.
Jarrah is such a beautiful timber, and I am lucky that I have been working with it all my life. Jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) is only found naturally in the southwest of western Australia. I understand there is only about 6% of the original forest remaining. Such a significant timber since European colonisation began here 1829. Until a couple of decades ago, in Western Australia just about every part of a timber framed house from the stumps to the ridge piece were all made from jarrah. It is a is very strong structural timber, very durable in the weather and in the ground, and a very high quality furniture material. Beautiful grain and rich reddish brown colours. The all round dream timber. Yep, I love the stuff.

Much of this stairway was made from recycled jarrah. This material had come from an assortment of buildings and other uses, much of it from a house which was built 80 years ago. All over it, there are the echoes of the former lives of this timber. Rows of nail holes along a tread nosing, testifying to a past life as a floor joist, with the nail holes even showing the width of the old floorboards which were once nailed to it. A couple of old checks in the side of a newel post, speaking of a former life as a verandah post on a building. The residual jaw marks from an old pair of floor cramps, telling of the time that piece of stair tread was once a floor joist. Other pieces were once rafters or ceiling joists, and the spacing of nail holes can often speak of these former lives. It is the echoes of the former lives of this timber which is so fascinating in something made from recycled timber. It is also why I dont fill the old nail holes. Let them speak.

Working with pre-worked timber also gets me thinking about the tradesmen who worked this timber when it was green. Thats how these building were always constructed. Green jarrah, while heavier, is easier to work with - and easier to nail. No need to pre-drill the nail holes like I had to! These guys built the houses only with hand tools. There were no power tools. Most of the saw mills were steam driven, and life was different. Simpler times, moving at a slower pace, when tradesmen took pride in their tools and their work. It wasnt just about money and having a job - it was a vocation. An identity. A way of life.

I tip my hat to those guys, and hope I did them proud in the way I re-used the timber they first worked.
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