I have always had great regard for craftsmanship. I have worked at developing some skills myself, but this morning I was reminded of true craftsmanship. The humble spider is the master.
Stretched four feet between our fence and a stop sign, this clever spider created the perfect insect trap. Humbling to see the wondrous works of mother natures creatures.
Inspired by mr. spiders efforts, I finished the dots on both ukes and went on to more challenging things.
Nothing is more challenging than cutting the binding slots around the edges of your recently boxed up instrument. You must hold the instrument steady and this was my solution. Worked fine.
The cut was a success. Now it is time to bend the binding and glue it on. Always a relief to get past this point.
I fired up the hot pipe and bent these white curly koa bindings for Ron's Bari.
Using the old bending form as a guide I was able to bend a really excellent binding. I am getting to really love this hand bending with a hot pipe.
This is how the binding starts out. Perfectly straight and taped together to be bent identically. This is the darker curly koa chosen for Stuart Fuchs's tenor.
Once taped together, I run it under the warm water tap, look how the figure stands out when wet.
Here is the first bend over the hot pipe. Then the tight bend around the upper bout followed by the lazy bend around the lower bout.
And very quickly you have the four pieces of binding ready to install.
Next comes the larger challenge of bending the sides. I was concerned as these very nice matching pieces were for the Stu Fuchs tenor. If I were to break one, I did not have others that looked as good. Big relief when the first one bent just perfectly. I put it into the mold to dry and turned to its book matched twin.
Hooray !, Another perfect bend, and Stu will have a uke with lovely matching sides. Even better, when you get a good bend like this it makes the assembly of the instrument so much easier. The parts all fit together without tension.
On this productive day I also got the finish sanding done on the fret boards, the frets bent on George Thomas's bender and a few of the bent frets installed. The spider on the corner of the garden would have been proud of me.