Eric Warner, General Manager of Pacific Rim Tonewood strung up his Tenor today and it looks and sounds great. Eric has been coming to my workshop half a day each week for several months now building his uke from scratch. He used lovely flamed maple and Redwood from the Pacific Rim inventory. We had great fun working together on this, his first instrument build.
Bending wood is always a challenge. I do it on a pipe which encloses a soderubg iron the pipe heats to 350 degrees, The wood is dampened Now to bend the lower bout, Slow and easy is the secret. And here we are, the first bend a success, Now to put it in the mold The second side about to be put into the mold and clamped up tight to dry and set for 24 hours
Each tone bar must be clamped down, couldn't get to them all this first time. Got the rest of them with this clamping. The next job was to thin the Spruce sides down to .80 so they can be bent. That is done on the Grizzley thickness sander.
And the tone bars are ready to be glued on. The tone bars radiate out from the bridge patch, notice that none of them extend to the edges thus all of the soundboard can vibrate, the prime benefit of the Kasha design The back is supported with three vertical grained spruce braces The tiger stripe maple neck is ready to be carved with spokeshave and rasps.
The all Spruce tenor was such a success I have decided to do an all Spruce Baritone Cutting the groove for the rope rosette around the sound hole The tone bar layout for a Kasha Baritone Tone bars cut to length. There will be lots of whittling tomorrow
Did you ever wonder why quality ukuleles attach strings through holes in the bridge HERE IS THE REASON THE STRINGS CAN PULL THE GLUED BRIDGE AWAY FROM THE SOUNDBOARD ON A TRADITONAL UKE.
A BETTER WAY, THE STRINGS GO THROUGH THE BRIDGE AND A HARDWOOD PATCH UNDER THE SOUNDBOARD. A SIMPLE KNOT IS PULLED UP AGAINST THE PATCH . A MUCH BETTER WAY TO ATTACH STRINGS. Making a tenor entirely out of Spruce was a fun and successful experiment. It sounds GREAT ! The soundboard is Englemann Spruce which delivers a warm and rich tone Back and sides are Sitka Spruce, It provides plenty of punch The neck is Tiger Stripe Big Leaf Maple as are the bindings. This uke is very light, only 13 ounces, lots of vibration, lots of sustain. This won't be the last all Spruce I will build, it is a good one. Its strung with UkeLogic soft tension Low G clear fluorocarbons.
Ten sets of these fine Gotah UPTs arrived and I am back in business. Thanks to The Ukulele Site in Honolulu that sells them to me. I was entirely out of them. Quality construction, 4 to 1 gear ratio, these are great tuners The Japanese company packs them for shipment as carefully as they make them And they look great on the instrument
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