Mahogany Soprano Ukuleles - Bindings

Did the bindings today while Regan was asleep.  I'm just posting Frank's right now so he can see what it'll look like with just a natural finish.  I wiped it down with mineral spirits after sanding, that would be a comparable color to just finishing it without stain.

Mahogany ukuleles (long overdue update, pic heavy)

Regan has been a pain in the butt as far as napping goes this week, so all my work has gotten done in the middle of the night basically.  In the past two days, I received in the mail: neck wood, tuners, bindings, bridges, a case, and fretboards.  I was super anxious to get to work, but Regan didn't go down for a nap until almost 7pm.  I had bent the sides and glued up the bodies the other day, and finally got to true them up tonight, as well as surface and cut the neck blanks to width.  I still need to trim them down to length, it took me awhile because I had bought a rough cut slab that was on sale.  I'll post a pic from the ebay auction since i forgot to take a before pic.  Anyway, here's a ton of pics.

Here's the before pic, it doesn't do it justice how rough the surfaces all were

Tomorrow:  rout and attach bindings, sand bodies, cut and glue up necks.  Stay tuned.

Mahogany Soprano Ukuleles

Didn't get as much done as I wanted today, Regan was super crabby and didn't want to nap.  I did make some decent progress though. One of these is now spoken for, I've told him since he's the first, he gets to pick the best one.  I haven't sanded the plates yet, so once I do that, the figure should really show.

Mahogany Ukuleles

So I've had these 2 large pieces of figured Mahogany laying around for a few months now.  Recently I became a stay-at-home dad, which gives me more time to work on instruments, so I decided to cut it up and make some ukes out of it. 

These are all up for grabs, so contact me at Callahanguitars@yahoo.com if you're interested.

#012 - L-00 (L-UU) mini

So I unfortunately had to postpone delivery by a week due to my long work schedule.  I got stuck working 7-7 all last week, and by the time I got home, had little time to finish things.  Had this week off, and was able to fine tune the issues with tuning and intonation.  So here it is with specs.

• Solid Birch body (Ladder Braced)
• 24" scale Indian Rosewood Fretboard on birch neck
• Rhondite fretboard inlays
• Walnut headstock veneer, classical style tuners
• Birch tailpiece, painted birch bridge
• Black celluloid binding

L-UU Paint and assembly

I've been working 10-12 hour days this week, so I've been scrambling to get this thing done by my promised date.  I managed to finish up all the painting and attached the neck tonight.  Tomorrow I'll do the final clear coat on the whole thing and start attaching hardware.

Overdue update on the L-00/L-UU

So I've been dealing with a couple setbacks over the past week or so.  First, The bindings shattered while I was flushing them up to the body, and then the dyes I had bought to stain the guitar just weren't taking well.  I don't think I will be using that brand again.  So I talked to my aunt and she gave me the go-ahead to just paint it.  I typically would not want to paint birch, but the dye was horribly uneven and dried with a white residue (i'm guessing the dye had a high salt content), and I'm on a deadline, so stripping it was out of the question.  I'm actually pretty pleased with the results so far.

I still need to sand the sides a little bit, install the bindings, and add a little filler where the router bit skipped before I paint the sides.  That should be coming in the next couple days.