There are many woods that are quite toxic. Among the worst of them is the beautiful Cocobolo that I am using for Ukulele #95. Cocobolo is extremely oily and that oil will cause bad health reactions if the dust is breathed or even if too much of it is put on your hands. I use a mask and gloves when working with it. Not a bad idea to mask up whenever you are creating dust with any wood, Your lungs are for air, not sawdust.
I completed installing all four side sound ports today. First I mark the location and shape of the sound hole ring with pencil. Next step, with a drill bit in my Dremel I roughly drill out the shape, cutting the spaces between the holes with a tiny exacto saw.
soon it looks like this, an ugly jagged hole.
Now, with this grinding disk on the Dremel, I carefully grind to the pencil marks and slowly fit the wooden ring into the oval hole as tightly as I possibly can.
The oval ring is glued in with gap filling super-glue and when that is set, a sharp chisel is used to pare the ring down level with the surface of the instrument. A little sanding and it is finished on the outside and looking good,
The inside is carefully trimmed and sanded flush with the piece of ebony veneer that has been glued to the inner side. The grain of the veneer is opposite that of the grain of the side and is installed as a protection against splitting.
Now that the side sound ports are finished it is time to box these instruments up. I sometimes use large rubber bands to do this, but this time I decided on the clamp technique. What do they say about, "you can never have too many clamps" We will see how this works in the morning. I liked the control I had with this method.
