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Tulipwood Concert Ukulele Build blog:

 


October 26 2021




I continued to work on the neck getting it ready to glue on to the top.

I glued on the headstock veneer. No big deal. I used my drum sander to thickness it to 2 mm. I then set my belt sender table to the head stock angle and bevel the nut side about 10°.



I am finding I really need to take care when working on the neck with an ebony strip to make sure it is really level. The headstock was not! I leveled it with a block plane and not shown I used a sharp 3/4" chisel as a scraper.



With it level I clamped down a spacer on the nut location and glued on the head stock. I used a caul I have for my ukuleles and clam clamps





While waiting I thicknessed some braces with a block plane and braced the top and back. Not real hard with a ukulele





I trimmed the heel side of the top right to the profile line and used the cut off to set the depth of my router to cut the ledge for the top. Cut from the slots out so that the router spends very little time cantilevered out over the ledge.







Check the fit



I had a fretboard with 14.7" scale length so I profiled it and trimmer it to size









Check the profile and thickness to a bit more than 4 mm





I ended the day by rough profiling the neck and heel and fitting it and the top on to my work board.





October 29 2021


Yesterday I got a bit of time in preparing to glue the rims to the top. First off I needed to straighten up the shop. It is amazing how quickly stuff piles up.



Luckily my work board provides me with a new surface I can work on.



I shaped all of the top braces. Nothing fancy the fans have little taper and rounded tops









I will play with the braces once the rims are glued on if I feel they are too stiff. First step is to align the neck and top and glue the neck to the top.



I get under my work board to check the neck center.



The neck and the top are glued on in line!





People following this blog might remember seeing that I had braced the back earlier with the top. Unfortunately at that time I did not think to radius the braces or glue them in a radius dish. I am putting a 25' radius on the back.

So I took a chisel and spit them off the back and cleaned them up. Thicknessed, put the 25' radius on them and glued them to the back in a 25' radius dish.









Profiled the back braces









This morning I got an idea to shape the volute on the -back of the head stock. I have a Luthier's Friend Sanding Station. I have been nervous using it to create the volute for fear of accidently sanding a divot before the volute. I have a roll of gluboost [url=https://gluboost.com/product/mastershield-tm/]Master Shield Tape[/url]. It is to sanding what masking tape is to painting. I protected the planed surface with the Master Shield tape and then sanded in a 1" radius volute up to the nut line.



To get an idea of how it worked I rough carved the volute mostly using a carving knife.





It will turn out good. I will wait until I have the fret board on until I finish shaping the neck.

October 30 2021




A quick update. I attached the rims and neck to the top. So far all is well. I will probably put the back on tomorrow. Other than a label and a bit of clean up it is ready.

First used my flamenco.classical guitar peones for the the transverse braces.



I had thought to use a peones/kerfed lining hybrid installation method to attach the top. My thought was to take 3 piece segments of kerfed linings and treat them as a peones. Ultimately even the lower bout curve worked to lift the center segment. Oh well. I used the kerf cuts as guides and cut a complete set of peones or tentalones and installed them.









Tedious, but in the Zen of the moment one by one I glued on the peones.



Really in no time at all they were installed. I flipped the assembly off the work board and flush trimmed off the excess.





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