It felt good to get back to work on this tenor, #98. I fitted the sound port ring, glued it in with medium superglue, and here I am carving it down to shape, both inside and out.
The outside I am able to cut with a straight blade Exacto carving knife.
The outside I am able to cut with a straight blade Exacto carving knife.
These Exacto carving blades are deadly sharp, but you still want to watch the grain of the wood carefully, and carve with it-not against it.
Fairing down the inside is a lot tougher to get to and this little curved knife from my carving days does the trick.
Now that the side sound port is installed it is time to box this Ukulele up. Glue is applied to the tentalones and the back is tightly clamped to the sides. This was done about 2:00 p.m. I am going to play a little ukulele with my friends this afternoon, go out to dinner with them, and we will see how things look later.
7:30 p.m. The glue is surely set by now, lets take the clamps of and see what we've got.
Everything looks fine. Got a nice bend in the back. Still some rough edges, must be time for The little router.
Everything looks fine. Got a nice bend in the back. Still some rough edges, must be time for The little router.
I will hold the body steady with this simple little stabilizer while I trim the edges of both top and bottom with the router.
I put a strip of masking tape around the body for the trim bit roller to ride on. That results in the cut being made a tiny bit away from the edge of the instrument. I will sand down the resulting very small little lip sticking out.
It takes but a minute and the edges are trimmed flush.
And now this uke is ready for the next step. Mañana
