Ron came to visit me today to get a little help with a string change on his baritone, but I really think he wanted to check on the progress of his new bari, now getting it's French Polish.
We got the strings changed, no problem, but then he started to tune up. Notice the little black mark beside the sound hole, just above his index finger?
Something I had never seen before, a sound hole tuner. It clips to the edge of the sound hole and is highly visible as you are tuning. It is apparently D"Adderio's latest gismo. Pretty clever I thought, although I am not sure I like the looks of the clamp on the face of the ukulele.
Ron mentioned that I had used the word "Munica" in an earlier post and had failed to explain what it was. This is a "Munica" which means rag doll in Spanish. It is what one uses to apply French Polish to an instrument. Simply a couple layers of wool from an old wool sock over which is placed a piece of clean soft cotton and held together with a rubber band. Onto the Munica is dropped 8 drops of shellac diluted in alcohol, three drops of pure grain alcohol, and one drop of olive oil for lubricant. The Munica is then rubbed firmly over the wood applying the dilute shellac. The alcohol quickly evaporates and the shellac is left. It kind of looks like a rag doll doesn't it?