sides cleanup, inside and out

 Headed out to the shop today to address the glued up body.

StrumMn!

The magic happens upstairs.

Un-clamped everything and there was a mess of glue.  I should have wiped up the drips but with all the clamps I was just feeling done.  I went to work with a hand chisel to remove the excess glue.  I also tried using my spindle sander.  I have decided I do NOT like the Gorilla brand wood glue.  It just seemed rubbery and was difficult to remove, unlike Titebond.  I think I'll buy another bottle of "the good stuff" before doing any more instrument gluing.

I did do a lot of sanding as well.  This has been money well spent.

I ended up just using a card scraper for over an hour to clean up the interior and exterior surfaces.  For those that don't know a card scraper is a piece of thin steel, maybe 1/16" but about 3"x5" rectangle.  You file the edges to create a burr and then use a burnishing rod or screwdriver shaft to turn the burr.  You then scrape the wood with the burr on the edge.  It can actually give a better surface than sandpaper.  On these curved surfaces though it was a workout to both hold the workpiece and scrape.

I next laid out the neck and headstock side profile and made the initial rough cuts.  I'll work on cleaning those up in my next work session.  There are layout lines but they're tough to see.

It's starting to look like something!

Brian

glue up of body shell/neck

 Today I did the glue up of the 3 pieces that make up the body sidewalls and neck.  I wanted to fill the 1/4" alignment hole but didn't have a dowel the right size, so I made one (sanded a 3/8" dowel down to size using a belt sander and spinning the dowel in my fingers).

You can never have enough clamps...  :)

Brian

LOTS of sawdust yesterday.

 I routed the body/neck shape to match my pattern board.  There was some flex in the plywood (or it wasn't held as tight to the pattern as I'd like by double stick tape) so they aren't perfect.  But, after I glue them together they'll get sanded perfect anyway so I'm not worried.  Spent a bunch of time with the shop vac after today's progress.

Posting this a day late because the pictures weren't showing up in Google drive.

Brian

a bridge too far

 Yesterday I decided that I needed to free up my router table, table saw, and band saw.  They were each set up for bridge work after I'd done a couple test pieces in cedar.  My actual bridge will be rosewood.  Now, while I have length and width figured out, I don't know the height for sure.  I decided that if I just leave it tall I can bring it down later during fitting.  I have a suspected height but final fretboard thickness and any top shaping will play into it later.  That said, I grabbed my rosewood and went to work.  I ended up using a rotary rasp bit instead of a router bit just because I liked the shape.  I also used a 1/8" piece of hardboard clamped to the router table making a "zero clearance" insert.  This is nice because the work piece is pretty small and the test pieces wanted to hang up or drop into the larger hole around the router bit.

Groove in the bottom done.

Bottom radius done leaving 4 feet.

Tapered the sides in the band saw.

Tapered the ends.  

If I lower it from the top I may take a little more off the ends.

Another view.

Next step was get ready to trim cut the body pieces against the pattern piece.  Went to swap router bits and the collet locking lever broke off, the screw holding it had snapped.  I took the router motor out of the grip section (after unmounting it from the router table).  I then used a bit extractor (basically a left handed drill bit run with the drill in reverse).  Wasn't sure it would work but it finally bit and spun out the broken screw.  Then off to one of my "buckets of bolts".  You do have one of those, right?  Dug to the bottom and found an identical screw except it was slotted head rather than Phillips, no worries though.  Put the router back together and mounted it back in the table.  Rather than routing I decided to trim a little closer to the line on the band saw and save the routing for tomorrow.  Also vacuumed up a LOT of sawdust that had been missed by my limited dust collection.  I'll feel better starting the routing fresh that way.

After I route these to shape I can then glue them and proceed to neck and headstock shaping.  I'll also get to work on the top & back book matching glue ups.  Getting to the fun parts soon, top and back thicknessing, bracing, and seeing if I can get a hemispherical shape in the go-bar deck with the help of a little heat and steam.

Brian

fretboard design layout

 Spent some time today in Microsoft Visio.  I've been using it since before 2000, which is before Microsoft gobbled them up and tied it into all their Office products.  This made it more useful?  It also bloated it in my opinion.  The red lines are "cut lines" while the black represent the strings.  Basically I layout the 2"x7.5" 12 fret fretboard, extend it to full scale length of 15".  Then I add hash marks at the nut for string spacing, hash marks at 7.5" (12th fret) for fretboard width and string spacing again, and the lines get extended to the bridge to get that spacing correct.  Note that I've got 2 G strings 1/8" apart at the left, also 1/8" from the outside strings to the edges of the fretboard.  On this fretboard I intend to do a line of inlay midway between strings (not between the octave G's, of course) which explains the extra red lines.

FYI, in the past I used Visio to design entire uke body shapes for both soprano and tenor, getting the curves that I wanted, rather than copying someone else shape explicitly.  I started with upper and lower bout widths, waist width, and length of body.  Then I started playing with the curves and sound hole until I liked the looks.  These can be printed full size and transferred to the wood used for body side bending molds.

I also mixed up some Rock Hard Water Putty to fix my "oops" from yesterday.  Hopefully tomorrow I can sand it out and get back on track.  The scrap piece clamped to the side has a piece of masking tape to prevent "gluing" these together.  Hopefully I get a clean edge to work with, I can always do a second coat.

Brian

a step forward, and a step back

 Today I first finished sanding the neck to width  as shown in my last picture yesterday.  I then laid out the interior shape into my pattern board leaving 1/2'-5/8" for the rim or sidewalls to which the top and back will be glued.  I cut his out with a jigsaw and sanded to even things out and to give the router pattern bit a smooth surface to run on.

Next I attached the pattern to the first of my plywood body pieces.  To do this I needed to drill a new positioning hole near the tail (which I left a little thicker to hold the banjo/mando tailpiece) and then used brads/nails to hold them together for routing.  I needed to tweak my hold up board fitted to the bottom to allow my routing but didn't get it quite right and I had the router jump and the pattern board broke (it was particle board).  Unfortunately this caused a gouge.  I plan to fix this with some Rock Hard Water Putty and it will become my pattern for routing new boards.  I think I'll do the shaping in the router table going forward which should avoid these kind of problems.  I didn't use it initially because the fence is set up for making my bridge and I didn't want to move it until I was ready for that.  Plans change, time to use the right tool for the job and deal with some minor setup time later.

More later!

Brian

Every build needs new jigs?

 Spent some time yesterday cutting and gluing up plexiglass for a circle jig.  I have a nice adjustable one but it only goes to about 6" and I needed 9.75".

I'll need to add another hole later for removing most of the inside leaving ~0.5" ring to glue the top and back into place.  I've got some nice wood picked out for this which I'll show later.

My first pattern with the pic glued on wasn't quite to size, about an 1/8" small and a bit uneven from cutting it free hand on the band saw.  This is what prompted further measurement and the realization that the lower bout was basically 3/4 of a perfect circle.  Thus the circle jig.

So after routing the "circle" to each piece I picked one to be my "new pattern".  I had to play some tricks to hold the "old pattern" in place to use a router pattern bit to transfer the "point" sections of the body onto the new pattern.  Basically a 1/2" straight bit with a 1/2" roller bearing.  The bearing follows the pattern and the cutter section duplicates the pattern into the work piece.  You have to be sure to have either a sacrificial piece of a "hold off" board like I used so the cutter can come through without hitting your workbench (or table saw deck like I used).

I also spent some time trying to recreate a floating bridge design I'd saved pics of years ago.  These tests are just done in some soft cedar to get the method down, the final will be in rosewood.  I'm not sure of the exact height or final width yet so I won't finalize until I get at least a blank fretboard in place.

This design hits on a cool process I've seen but never tried.  That is running wood through the table saw at a diagonal!  I learned that it's best to bring the blade up in small increments.  Trying to do it full height the first time was frustrating and resulted in burned wood and an uneven surface.  It was probably terrible for my bearing and blade as well.  Live and learn!  I also ran the work the wrong direction through the router table the first time.  Doing this wrong causes the cutter to push the work piece away from the fence and on a small piece it really messed with my clearances.  This also required an angle cut on both sides using the band saw.  A tip here is to save the cutoff and put it back in place when running the second side to help keep things square.  (Both can be used when routing the bottom too depending on order of operations.  I think that I've settled on route first, table saw second, band saw third.  But that could change.

Finally, I spent time trying to even up my fretboard sides from the band saw oversize cuts.  I just used a bench top belt sander.  Looking at it when done it looked too wide at the nut so out came the ruler again.

It WAS too wide, so I drew in new lines and will re-sand it tomorrow.  Hopefully I can bring it to the lines without any more mishaps.  I'm going to save the transition from neck to peghead and the volute until I can glue up the 3 pieces of ply and layout/cut the peghead at a 15 degree angle (or there about).

That's all for tonight, hope you enjoy the journey and maybe learn something (to do, or NOT to do).

Brian

 

New build at last!

 I saw a video recently of someone who made a Little Joe guitar.  More like an open tuned 4 string uke sized wooden banjo with just 2 frets so you could play 1,4,5.  It also combined a holder for a harmonica.

Now while this is cute it made me think back to a uke made by Regal/Harmony (I've seen them labeled as both in reference books).  The one that interested me was called a mando uke and looked like this.

So I took a good straight on picture I found, imported it into Visio, enlarged it to actual size by bringing the scale from nut to bridge to 15", then printed it across 5 pages (again, actual size).

Then I cut out the pics, taped them together, and used spray glue to attach them to a wood pattern board which then got cut out.

Next I traced that pattern onto 3/4" plywood which will be used as a framework for the sides and neck.

I'll use good quality quarter sawn wood for the top/back/bracing/fretboard.

Oh, and did I mention that it will use steel strings and be a 5 string?  gGcea, octave G's closely spaced.

Wish me luck, thinking this will be pretty quick for basic construction but I've got some finishing touches in mind that will likely stretch it out a little bit.  This is 1 day since I thought about it and the 6 rough outlines have already been cut out (not to the lines yet, just separated to make them easier to work with).

Brian

All back together

Strung up and ready to play.  Note the string change on Susan's uke, one of my cats thought the strings were toys and chewed it in half.  I had a brand new set of take-offs from another uke that I replaced them with, hope that is okay.

some repair work

Hi all, sorry for the long stretch between posts.

I was asked by one of our StrumMn regulars, Susan, if I could reglue a bridge. No problem!
Before I could get to it I opened one of my own cases and my own bridge had popped off as well!

So here is a series of pictures of the ukes/bridges. The key to doing this is to locate them properly, I use masking tape, and then remove all glue from both pieces and any finish. Bridges really need to be glued wood to wood, not wood to finish.

I've got these all cleaned up and ready to glue but won't get to that until tomorrow. I need to decide if I want to actually clamp them or just apply weight in a careful manner. I've done it both ways and think I like just using weight as long as I'm careful with the glue.

Anyway, on with the pictures. I'll give an update when they're done and strung up.Brian

some new wood on the way...

I'm picking up this piece of myrtle that has both curl and birdseye. It's 5/16" thick so I MAY try to resaw it and get 2 ukes out of it. It's enough for soprano back/sides/headstock, I'll need to pick some other wood for the top. Right now I'm thinking Western Red Cedar or Spruce, depends on what I can find that excites me.
No idea what to use as binding... what do you think would look nice?

Researching something new.

I've been asked by a friend about building a resonator ukulele for him and have starting researching what goes into building one.

In a resonator you don't want the "box" adding to the sound so it's "over-built" compared to a standard instrument. In this way the cone gets to generate all the sound.

I've found multiple sources for cones and coverplates, from National, Republic, Delta and others.
At this point I'm leaning towards either National or Delta, I figure if I'm putting the effort into doing this right then I don't want to go too cheap. Also, these two are interchangeable (if I specify the size correctly) so it's easy to swap between them later if desired.

The other piece I want up front is the sound well that the cone sits on. There are several ways to go on this but I'm looking at tubular plywood, like a drum shell or tambourine ring, to support the cone. I've seen this done for guitars and it will really support the cone while also locking the top/back together to stop any unwanted vibration.

Once I get these I can work on the rest of the design to get body size and neck angle correct. I'm thinking about sizing this to fit a specific case and hoping to make it a soprano but will bump it up to concert if necessary.

After pricing a few components my thought is that I might do 3 of these simultaneously, keeping the bodies identical but using different cones so I can compare them. If I go this route then my friend will get his pick, I'll keep one, and one may be up for grabs, we'll see. I don't expect to get much done until next spring at this point, mostly design and planning.

In the mean time, lots of uke playing with StrumMn!
Check http://strummn.shutterfly.com/ for dates/times and come join us!

Logo madness?

Got a custom branding iron and burned the logo onto a piece of leather.
Then did a little braiding to make something to hang it with.


Now I've got it attached to my latest uke.