This lovely Maple uke, number 174, is being built for a gent in Canada named Paul Raines.
What could make more sense than to substitute rain drops for my usual round Paua Abalone dots?, But how could that be done? Well my friend Kurt at Bay Engraving had the answer.
So after that laser magic I came home with a fretboard with holes and lots of little pieces of holly to fill them
Lets just place the rain drops in their holes and see what they will look like--oh, I like it
Now a little drop of glue in the hole, tap the raindrop in gently, and move on to the next one.
Now they are all in. We must wait an hour for the glue to dry and then we can begin the finishing.
we are going to sand in a 12 foot radius and the rain drops will be sanded down flush in the process. the fretboard is taped to a flat surface and the sanding begins.
This sanding takes a bit of time, and a bit of energy but the result is a nicely radiused fretboard and raindrops that are perfectly smooth to the curved fretboard and very pleasing in their almost white Holly contrasting with the brown Honduran Rosewood.
And so, here is the almost final result, What could be more fitting for a man named Raines to have rain drops on his ukulele fretboard.