Wednesday, July 18th, 2012:

This has nothing to do with the harp ukulele build, but Hannah (she's now almost a year-and-a-half old!) wanted to say "Hi!" When I'm building, she starts to feel a little neglected, so I thought I'd let her in on it all:

 

  

 

Yesterday I spent a bit of time doing some preliminary neck-fitting. The main thing I wanted to do was to get the neck centered and in line with the soundbox centerline. It was a little off, so I needed to sand a little off the bass side of the heel. (I had already coved out the heel face, leaving about 1/8" of a margin on the left and right edges of the heel face, so all I had to do was to sand that narrow 1/8" ledge.) Here I have laid out how the neck and fingerboard will be positioned.

 

  

INDEX:

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  2. Working on the Top and Back
  3. Finishing the Rosette, Harpbox Peghead Veneer
  4. Bracing
  5. Carving the Braces
  6. Bending the Sides
  7. Neck and Tail Blocks
  8. Pegheads & Top Kerfing
  9. Profiling the Sides for the Back
  10. Soundport and Side Reinforcements
  11. Gluing on the Top
  12. Gluing on the Back
  13. Trimming Overhang & Harpbox Peghead
  14. Routing for Binding
  15. End Wedge & Binding
  16. Scraping the Binding, Binding the Harpbox Peghead
  17. The Box is Done --- On to the Neck!!!
  18. Working on the Neck & Fingerboard
  19. The Neck is Finished!!! Now to the Bridge!!!
  20. Peghead Inlay, Final Sanding & Pore-Filling
  21. Shellac Seal Coats and Finishing!!!
  22. Finishing the Finish!!!
  23. The Final Steps
  24. It is Finished!!!

Then it was time to install the frets. I had a bit of trouble here, with lots of chipping of the fingerboard surface, at several spots along the fret slots. Even though I had beveled the tops of the slots slightly, and had put a slight bend into the fretwire, for some reason the frets just didn't want to seat and stay put, and I ended up with lots of chipping.

So, I made some ebony dust, packed it into the chips, and dropped on some superglue. After that was done, I clamped the back-bowed fingerboard in the middle, letting it rest on a couple of 1/4" blocks at the two ends, to set the board straight again.

 

This morning I spent quite a bit of time sanding down the superglued patches, and here's what it looks like now --- back to normal! (Oh, yeah --- and I also filed the edges flush to the fingerboard sides and beveled the ends of the frets. Full dressing and polishing of the frets will come later...)

  

The final thing I did today was to glue the fingerboard to the neck. (I found that I could re-use my Kasha baritone uke fingerboard caul, by placing it over the fingerboard at the 3rd fret.)

 

Later tonight, I will probably start carving the neck!!!

  
       

 

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