It began this morning after breakfast. I took modern technology to the task of smoothing up all those rasp shaped backs. It was a no sawdust event, at least no sawdust that I ever saw. The trick was a random orbital sander with a dust port that I adapted to fit my portable vacuum. I hooked those two together and smoothed up all those backs and never saw a bit of sawdust. How slick is that?
The next task is to smooth up all of those concave interiors. Remember, I hogged out the wood using a forstner bitt in my drill press with a device to stop the drill at a given depth. Now I must clean up the jagged landscape left by the forstner bitt.
And the way to do that is with a very rough eighty grit sanding disk attached to a right angle drill.
When the little holes created by the pilot pin of the Forstner bitt disappear you know you are at the depth that you set on the drill press. If you did it right you will find you have a nice thin resonant but strong back. If you did it wrong and sand through the back you get to start over again, Mine were turning out just fine and then it was time to do a few chores in the yard and at 2:30 head for the monthly BUG "Bellingham Ukulele Group jam.
A nice turn out, and a lot of fun. Here, during a little break is Pat Madsen who has been playing his beautiful new Moore Bettah to the envy of us all.
Here is another picture with Pat MacDonald in the forefront. I counted about 54 people. If you look to the background you can see a sales table where folks can bring ukes they want to sell. I brought a couple of my concerts, Sold the last of my concert pinecones that I am still finishing so that build of all three are gone. Still have five soprano pinecones un committed. I say five because I am going to keep one of them for myself.