THATS EASY--THIS !
What a wonderful holiday spending precious time with our great grand-daughter Tallulah and her mom and dad, her grand parents and aunt and uncle. The wonder seen in an infants eyes awakens old memories and kindles new joy. Meet Tallulah and her mother Megan Christie.
After two days in Seattle it was home to the workshop. A dark and rainy day perfect to hole up writing with a nice fire in the fireplace and working in the workshop. I finished the first chapter of my J.J.Donovan biography "The Donovan Diary" and boxed up the second set of Concert Pinecones.
You mustn't forget to glue in the label before you box up a ukulele. It is pretty hard to do this through the sound hole. I suppose I might look more professional if I had labels made by a printer, but I take pride in making every bit of an instrument by hand. These labels are painted this bright orange with watercolor paint on heavy watercolor paper from my painting days, and as is obvious, hand printed. I don't care what you say, I kind of like em.
Now it is time to box them up. Brush a thin coat of glue on both body and back
and clamp them together with these long rubber bands. They provide terrific tension. Just be sure you have the back perfectly positioned.
After a couple of hours it is time to take the bands off. you want some over-lap of the back. That you can sand off. If the back does not cover the sides you have a serious problem. All three backs look perfect, now it is time to start trimming the over-lap
I suppose this could be done with a small router, but I always prefer the safe, slow and laborious way. I do what I can with a super sharp little Ibis finger plane
and then I take the old reliable bow sander to it. This does a great job of sanding off the excess while shaping the round edges at the same time.
After a few minutes work the edges look like this. Tomorrow I will do lots more body sanding with progressively finer grits of paper, fit and attach ebony heel caps, and start putting frets on the fret boards. These ukes will finish up fast now.
