Concert Ukulele, Neck shaping *UPDATE*

So last night I got the fretting/binding done and glued the fretboard down onto the neck.  Slept forever today and woke up at 3:30pm, guess my cat decided to let me sleep for once.  Took my allergy meds and got to work immediately downsizing the overhang so the neck and fretboard were as flush as i could get em.  I had planned on using my orbital sander like I did on Tom's, but the sandpaper I bought isn't as high quality as 3m, so I ended up block planing the crap out of it.  Once it was smooth enough for my liking, I went at it with my rasps and files.  Last weekend I had watched an episode of The Woodwright's Shop with Roy Underhill and they were taling about how handcut rasps seem to cut more thoroughly than machine cut, so I tried out my shitty 3 dollar Harbor Freight rasp set over the more expensive Home Depot set.  Needless to say, I no longer think the cheap ones are so shitty.  Anyways, here's a bunch of pics, there's still some more filing and sanding to do, but its about 90% done.

And here's today's work so far.  As I said, still a little work needs to be done to clean up as many tool marks as possible.

I'm going to try to condense the next several blog posts, I have something special planned for my 100th entry.

*UPDATE*

Just slotted the headstock and drilled for tuners.  Learned a new technique involving the drill press and chisels, so I can ditch the sloppy routing.

Now to sand out any rough spots.

Tom's Ukulele, Neck part 2

So the next day I tackled the first half of the fretboard.  I did all the math for the fret scale, got out the digital calipers and fret saw, and cut all the slots.  Let me tell you, I'll never do this for a guitar.  Too much sawing, and hard to stay precise.  So after I got all my slots cut, I layed out my outline.



I may scoot the nut forward a couple millimeters, I want to make sure it gets placed on a flat surface, and it'll give me the option of joining at the 11th as opposed to the 12th fret. 

I cut the outline out by hand today.  I seem to have forgotten to take a pic of that.  It was pretty ugly, and took a few hours of sanding and filing to bring the overhang down to my pencil lines.  After I was satisfied with the edges, I marked the spots for the inlay dots, and drilled the holes.

I had to take a break after this to run to walmart to get some craft sticks to mix epoxy with.  As soon as I got back, I gathered up all the sawdust I could find from the sanding into a dixie cup, mixed in the epoxy, and clamped in my mother of pearl dots.  Here it is after some sanding to remove excess epoxy, and some scratches.

After this, I got out my heat gun, and a scrap of binding that was plenty long enough to wrap the whole fretboard, and molded it around the end.  I let it harden back up, then I glued it all in, where it now sits curing.  Tomorrow I plan on fretting it up and attaching to the neck.

I might go check on it in an hour or two.  If it's set, i'll add a pic.  Stay tuned.





Tom's Ukulele update

Mail just arrived.  Brazilian Ebony for the fretboard.  The board is 0.25"x4.5"x12", so I'll have an extra piece for another fretboard.  Also got some 7mm mother of pearl inlay dots.

Side 1



Side 2



Tom, when you see this, let me know which side you'd prefer for your fretboard.

More later.