We spent the weekend socializing with some of our gamer friends, including my friend Ed Healy.  He came to town to run one of his Gamerati Tour event stops and asked if he could stay with us for a few days.  He was a great houseguest and is a lot of fun to have around, so I hope it’s not the last time he stays here with us while criss-crossing the country.

While Ed was venturing out to Colorado Springs, I got the last bit of French Polishing done on Dad’s ukulele.  After a nervewracking process of removing the masking tape that covered the location where the bridge would be, I installed both the bridge and the nut.  Today I fixed up the peghead to accommodate the ukulele tuners that I am going to install.  All that’s left is to install the tuners, apply the label, and give it one final polish before stringing it up and hearing how it sounds!

Oh, one other fun thing… last Friday was the start of the “That Man Is You!” program at the Church.  I helped organize getting this thing started, and it was really encouraging to see 20 men show up at 5:45 am on a Friday morning to watch the DVD series and have a discussion about the topic.  The first session was about leadership in our society today and the morality of the people that our society considers leaders.  Let’s just say it was a pretty stark portrait painted by the speaker.  We get to find out more next week, so stay tuned for more.

That’s about all I have to say at the moment.  I am confident that this is going to be a good, full week (which I hope will include more blogging!)

In just the blink of an eye, a few weeks have lapsed since I have updated the ol’ blog here.  The good news is that my lack of long-form writing is due to a lot of real-life stuff going on.  There’s a lot of work stuff going on and a few less than great personal things going on, but I’d rather spend this time to focus on the new, fun, and exciting stuff that is happening.

For those of you not currently tuned in to my Facebook page and my Flickr page, I have been making solid progress on finishing my Dad’s ukulele.  The French Polishing is turning out to be both fun and relaxing.  It is a technique that will take some time to master, but I feel like my progress has been good for a first-timer.  I even got noticed by Breedlove Guitars on Twitter!  Because a lot of this work is happening in the garage, I tend to be posting progress on this project more in mobile photos and status updates, but I’ll probably do a wrap-up once it’s all complete.

Since that project is nearing completion (if I’m lucky, it’ll get done in the next week or so) I went ahead and ordered my StewMac dreadnought guitar kit and a small luthier’s shop worth of tools!  My main concern at ordering the stuff for this project so late in the summer is that I’m going to run out of nice weather to finish the project this year.  I may have to actually (gasp) get up early on the weekends if I’m going to have enough hours in the shop to actually complete it before winter hits, or I’m going to have to invest in a space heater and some shop lights for my garage.

But regardless of the weather conditions, I am excited about this project.  I’m confident that I’ve educated myself sufficiently by reading books and the Internet to get this kit built, and the lessons learned on Dad’s ukulele give me confidence in the finishing and binding processes.  So now it’s just time to execute!  More soon!

Spit coating is the initial step to putting on a French Polish finish.  I started the process on my Dad’s ukulele today, after doing a test sample just to get the feel for how shellac goes on to an instrument.  For this process, I just used some folded over cheesecloth and a little elbow grease to put on three initial coats (called spit coats) to provide a base for the French Polish finish.  One important point that I found was to do the bindings and purflings first, then cover the “field” (or large areas of wood) second using long vertical swipes along the grain.  The reason for this is to prevent the cocobolo wood coloring from bleeding over into the lighter wood of the body.  The alcohol that dissolves the shellac can pick up some of the coloration of the wood as it is applied, and if you have anywhere with white or different colored wood you can transfer this color to other parts of the instrument.  This looks bad, so should be avoided.

Some interesting things about applying a shellac finish:

• It’s sticky, but dries to the touch almost immediately.
• High-strength alcohol (in my case Everclear) works to both clean up the pipettes and my fingers after applying the finish.
• The wood looks 3D almost immediately, and it seems this only heightens as the shellac gets applied further because the finish will refract more light.
• Natural wood binding is where it’s at… looks GOOD already.

Now I just have to order some pumice powder and I’ll be ready to fill the pores and grain.  Once that process is complete, it’ll be time to do the 30 (or so) bodying sessions to build up the finish.  Good times!

Here you see the materials required for a french polish (not pictured: extra-fine pumice, which will be purchased soon.)  First off, I love how all of the materials appear as if they were purchased sometime in the late 1950’s.  I imagine Sarah Dukes is loving the aesthetics of it all…

Anyway, back to the point.  This finishing process involves the use of shellac flakes and alcohol to create a very thin finish that seals and (minorly) protects the wood but allows for the best possible sound.  I’ve never done a finish like this before, and it seems that each woodworker has their own process for this.  I will be basing my approach largely on the video instructions from luthier Michael Thames and also tips gleaned from my books by Ervin Somogyi.  I will start later on today or tomorrow by mixing up my 2 pound cut of shellac for spit coating.  I’ll need to get some pumice as well, I’m hoping a hardware store will have it available otherwise I will have to order it from the Internet.

This is going to be fun (I hope)!

Dad’s ukulele is ready for finishing!  All I had to do today was unclamp the fretboard and do some final sanding on the neck.  The masking tape on the bridge covers the area where the bridge will be attached, and this is done after the finishing is complete.  I just got done ordering around $100 in supplies to do the finishing (the cheesecloth I wanted just came in economy size) and once that arrives I will be ready to begin.  I might do some testing on the kit that I messed up, so I can figure out how to apply the sealing coats of finish properly.

That’s all for now!

It’s the Fourth of July again!  Mine started off with a decadent session of sleeping in, followed by some reheated pizza for lunch.  After some tummy time with Eve, I headed out to the workshop to get two of my projects further underway.  As you can see from the first photo, I got the fretboard installed on my Dad’s ukulele… it’s finally starting to look like an instrument!  The attaching of the neck went well, I just did some spot sanding and the gluing of the fretboard today.  Tomorrow I have to so some measurements and taping of the bridge location and the uke will be ready for French Polish!

The second photo is of the mobile base for my band saw.  I got to practice some long dormant erector-set skills in assembling the wheeled base.  The orange feet control the castors, if they are flipped up (as in the photo) the castors flip out and the base rests on some leveling feet.  When flipped down, the base can roll on all four wheels which will allow me to store the thing when not in use.  It was fun to put together, I got to use my ratchet set, and now the stand is ready for the saw to be bolted to it.  Hopefully some of my strapping friends will come over and help me put it in position in the near future.

The rest of the evening is going to be spent grilling.  This holiday invariably reminds me of fireworks at my great-aunt’s house, or pool parties and my aunt’s house.  My grandpa used to grill for the pool parties, and both he and my aunt are gone now… so between working in my shop and grilling on the grill that my aunt gave me, I’m remembering them today.  I’d best get out there and get to cookin’!  Happy Fourth of July everyone!

Saturday was my day to relax, so Tasha watched Eve while I worked on Dad’s ukulele.  I succeeded in getting the front binding on and filled.  Most of the afternoon was spent sanding and scraping and there’s still more to go.  I created a Facebook album to chronicle the progress, it is coming along well!  There were a few imperfections in the binding but I think I’ve got them covered, and I wrapped up progress on Saturday by wiping down the ukulele to get a sense of what it will look like when finished, and it is going to look nice.

Today was Tasha’s day to relax, so I spent most of the day on baby duty.  I fed her, and then decided that Teddy, Eve and I deserved a walk.  I loaded up the stroller and leashed the dog and we went on the normal route that Teddy and I take.  Teddy had a tendency to run off into the grass which made me jerk the stroller around, so he spent quite a bit of the walk being in various degrees of trouble.  Luckily, Eve didn’t mind and was conked out asleep in the first quarter of the walk.

When I got back, I played some guitar while Eve napped.  She’s been fussy, then charming, then fussy again and this has been the way the evening has played out.  Now she’s napping, thankfully.  Not much else to report, aside from my vacation time being approved so I get a little extension to the long 4th of July weekend!  Hoo-ray!

On Tuesday, it was the second anniversary of my grandfather passing away.  I’ve been thinking a lot about him lately as I’ve been working on my Dad’s ukulele kit and I still miss him a lot.

This week I decided to have a look at buying some tools, since the proximity to Father’s Day usually equates to some good sales.  Grandpa always used to have Craftsman tools, so I decided to look at Sears and Sears Outlet for a band saw.  I was lucky enough to find a really nice Craftsman Professional 14″ band saw with stand for only $189 at a nearby Sears Outlet store, so I ordered it.  This model is normally in the $500 vicinity, so I feel like I got an excellent deal.  I’m going out to the Littleton Sears Outlet to pick it up tomorrow, and I can’t wait to start using it for my guitar projects.  The item listing had the item condition as “New” so I’m eagerly anticipating a nice new saw to use.

More soon!

Kerfing on the front went great!

The back binding looks good at a distance.

Even from this side!

However up close there are some sizable gaps to be filled.

Today I spent a little more time with the side bending iron in my work to get the wood bindings on Dad’s ukulele.  I was pleased to find out that the binding that I had bent stayed pretty much in the same bent position as I left it, but I still re-soaked it so I could work it a little more.  I got things as far as I could work it, the wood was starting to scorch and in some cases cracked.  I decided it was time to attempt gluing these bindings on, and it became quickly obvious that things were going to be harder than I expected when I superglued my fingers to the binding on about three occasions.

Bending wood bindings is hard.  As you can see from the pictures, it came out really well with a few notable exceptions.  As the wood dried, I got some gaps between the edge of the binding and the body.  The kerfing went on so well that I went ahead and put it on the entire body at once.  I was very pleased with how this worked, despite the fact that I soaked some of the strips too long and they delaminated.  I did get better as I worked the wood bindings, the second half was much better than the first.

So far my favorite tool is the hand-held scraper.  I used it to even out the binding edges along the body of the ukulele, and it makes these satisfying tiny curls of wood as it removes a small amount of material each time.  More about that later.  The solution I am going to use for the gaps in the binding is one that my Dad recommended, and my grandpa used to use on his bowl inlays.  He would take a pile of sawdust of the same type of wood and mix it with wood glue until it is a paste, and then use that paste to fill the gaps.  With any luck, this will fill the gaps satisfactorily and I can move on with finishing.

I wish I could say I was more satisfied with the results, but the wood binding is tough to work with and very hard to make look perfect.  It’s all a learning experience though!  More soon!

Today I got a lot of work done on Dad’s ukulele.  Thanks to some lessons learned from the last kit, I was able to get the kerfing and binding channels routed without major incident.  Thanks to the ultra-crappy build quality of the Grizzly ukulele kits, the thing was considerably destabilized again so I decided it would be best to attempt to bend and glue the binding.  Bending the binding was pretty fun, however I did push a little too hard and cracked the binding in one place.  It was repairable, so no real loss there.

Unfortunately, tragedy struck again while I was trying to fit the binding.  While I was attempting to press the binding into the channel too much pressure was applied to the back of the ukulele and the lack of glue in the Grizzly kit was once again made apparent. This time most of the back came apart from the sides and part of the lower bout came apart on the top.  Since the channels were routed properly, this one was fixable.  I simply had to glue the sides back to the top and back and hold it in place until the glue started to set.  I want the glue to dry fully before I attempt to do more of the bindings, so I had to suspend my bending operations for the day.

I’m counting today as a success, since I learned from my past failures and was able to repair the shoddy workmanship this time around. With any luck I’ll need one more session to get the bindings bent and glued, then sanding, assembly and finishing.  More soon!