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1953 Delta Milwaukee 14" Band Saw Restoration #6: Finishing Touches
I finished cleaning up the upper guide post and blocks and replaced the upper thrust bearing. This was all pretty simple stuff after doing the others already. I put it all back together and ran it....
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Summer Uke Build #1: Getting Ready for Summer (Concert) Uke Build
I have been playing guitar for nearly 30 years and have been woodworking for about 16 years. For a long time, I have wanted to combine these two hobbies by building a guitar or two. About 18 months...
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Summer Uke Build #2: Bending the Sides
I took the advice of Bob from his comment on my previous post and soaked the sides overnight. They were still too stiff to bend without tearing out and they did, in fact, tear out some more. So I...
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Summer Uke Build #3: Thicknessing, Jointing and Joining the Top
I’m very late with posting this. It was 114 degrees in the shop, so didn’t spend much time taking photos. This all took place on Father’s Day 2016. For the top, I picked up a couple of 6’ planks of...
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Summer Uke Build #4: Cleaning up the sides
The real drama in this build so far is in the sides. They split and splintered and were generally a bit of a disaster when attempting to bend. The two biggest factors in this were that 1.) I used...
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Summer Uke Build #5: Joining Back, Gluing Neck Block, Adding Rosette
In the last few weeks I’ve managed to steal a few hours to work on the uke and make a little progress. The weather is cooling a bit so that makes it easier to be in the garage for longer periods of...
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Summer Uke Build #6: Cutting Soundhole Making Radius Dishes
Today’s update is a bit incomplete. I cut out the soundhole and sanded down the olive wood rosette to be a little more level with the top. I bought a drum sander in the interim as I just don’t trust...
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Summer Uke Build #7: Tail detail/Kerfed Lining/Top Braces
I haven’t posted in quite some time, but haven’t had time to do much in the last few months. I have managed to get some shop time the last two weeks. I was prepared to abandon the project, at least for...
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Summer Uke Build #8: Gluing Top Bracing, Roughing Back Braces
Another vacation day today and so another day in the shop. Today I made a bridge plate. The only stock I had on hand that was already thin enough and hard enough to do the job was some cut-off wood...
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Summer Uke Build #9: Not summer anymore but still a uke build
So summer has become winter and I’m still not even close to finished with this. But I nibble away at it when I can. I had a couple of vacation days late last week that were intercepted by a sick...
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Summer Uke Build #10: Gluing the back... or not.
Last night I picked up a bunch of #64 rubber bands from Office Max and decided to use them to glue the back on the uke. The back was radiused using the radius dish I made, so I thought I’d screw some...
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Summer Uke Build #11: Glue the back / go-bar deck
Update from yesterday’s post #10The shelf lining that I used on the top sheet of plywood in the go-bar deck came loose overnight. There seems to be some kind of chemical reaction between the 3M spray...
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Summer Uke Build #12: The body is complete (except maybe binding)
I pulled the go-bars off this morning. Using a chisel, I trimmed the excess wood from the back to be flush with the sides. It turned out pretty well. There’s a nice radius to the back and the seam...
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Summer Uke Build #13: Neck Scarf Joint
Today I was able to get the scarf joint for the neck done and I went to Rockler to see if they had any wood that would make a good fingerboard. I had a $5 off coupon and got a $6 piece of mahogany, but...
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Summer Uke Build #14: Fingerboard Blank
I’ve been trying to figure out how to get a fingerboard blank. I have been reading up on woods that are appropriate for the purpose and only very hard woods will work. Ebony is most common with...
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Summer Uke Build #15: Fingerboard and Fret Slotting Miter Box
After having cut a few fingerboard blanks from a chunk of mesquite, I need to choose one and get it thicknessed and ready for use. I picked the best one and flattened it, squared up one side and...
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Summer Uke Build #16: Cutting Fret Slots
With my last entry, I had been attempting to make a template to accurately space the frets. After several failed attempts, I decided to just correct the template with the fewest issues. I had been...
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Summer Uke Build #17: Neck Mortise
The last several days of shop time have been pretty much dedicated to building a neck mortise jig. This jig is designed to hold the uke body firmly while routing the neck mortise. The neck mortise has...
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Summer Uke Build #18: Fitting the neck
My initial attempt to fit the neck was a utter failure. The mortise and tenon fit pretty well, though the shoulders of the tenon were not flush with the body. So I tweaked and tweaked the shoulders...
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Summer Uke Build #19: Rough Shaping Neck and Aligning Fingerboard
Over the last few days I’ve been rough shaping the neck. I’ll spare the details of the scarf joint that puts the headstock at a 15 degree angle as I covered that on the previous neck blank I made. Here...
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