Tom's Ukulele

About 4-5 weeks ago I had posted up some pics of some nice bookmatched walnut veneers I had gotten in asking if anyone was interested in a soprano ukulele.  My long time friend Tom stepped up almost immediately wanting one of my originals.  I told him I'd get started after I finished up the repair jobs I already had on reserve.  After I finished Lou's Regal, Ted's Gibson, and another of Lou's guitars, I started making a rig to joint the veneers.  I forgot to hook my shopvac up to the jointer and made a giant mess when I put some 1x8's through it for the jig.

After I sanded them to where I was satisfied, I taped em up and set em aside so I could join together a backing.  I felt the veneers were a little too thin to stand on their own, so I laminated the top to a piece of joined maple, and the back to a piece of mahogany I had.  That brought the overall thickness to about 1/8. 

After fumbling around with trying to print out a 6 page blueprint I had downloaded and tweaked a little, I finally got the body section to print and cut it out to use as a template.  Placed it where I thought the grain looked best, and I cut both sides out with a coping saw. 

I cut them both out slightly oversized.  Once I glue em onto the sides, I plan on using a flush/trim router bit to size it up perfectly.  Gonna assemble my bending iron this weekend, and hopefully get my mold made monday.  Keep an eye out for updates.