Making A Boat Paddle Tenor Ukulele - Part 6 - Sides + Front and Back

Okey-dokey, some time in the shed at last and getting back on track.

Sides
The moulded sides are well and truly dried and are holding their shape quite nicely.
The cutaway section is in two parts and needs some re-inforcing gussets to prevent chipping and to strengthen the joins.  I have chosen a couple of pieces of African blackwood, both for strength and because it matches both the fretboard and the headstock.

These two gussets will be glued in place before the linings are added to the inside.

Here is a view from the inside.

This end block will become the corner of the block that houses the neck.  It will be made from cedar for lightness and strength.
I'll cut a block from this piece of Australian cedar and I will also shape the mortice in it before gluing.  This so much easier to do while the cedar piece is long - it is also safer when using a router.

Gluing Up the Front and Back

The front and the back are made from book-matched thin (2mm) pieces of mango.
Before gluing, each piece has to have its glue-edge perfectly straight.  I do this with a plane on a shooting board.

This timber is not mango, but black wattle - but you get the idea.

The edge-trued pieces are glued together and held in place under tension by nothing more than masking tape.

A flat surface is placed on top to keep the drying skins from warping and this is held down with a small weight.

The finished results are shown with the mango skins dried and flat.

The skin on the left will be the front and that on the right will be the back.

 This skin is most highly figured of the two, and will look best on the back where it will be able to show off its lovely grain to advantage.
The other will have a sound hole cut into it as well as a bridge glued on top.

Finally I have cut some strips from what was left of the mango used for cutting the sides.  These strips will be used for bracing and strengthening pieces on the backs of the front and back skins.

Next time I'll work on the neck.

A Damaged Plane Blade - Bringing It Back to Life

I received in the mail a much abused Turner handplane blade from Dylan's newly acquired number 5 jack.
See the comments from this post
Turner Hand Planes

Here it is as he received it:

The blade is near full and shows signs that it has been sharpened in the past.

Sadly someone has abused the cutting edge over its life, so that it now looks like this:

One corner is missing and there is a chunky chip out of the edge near the other corner.  The bevel has become rounded chipped and jagged.

 It is easier to see the damage up close .........

The back shows that a previous owner tried to flatten as part of the sharpening process, but that is such a while back that rust has started to appear.

First step will be to square off the blade by grinding back the old bevel to remove all the chips and jagged points - leaving the blade straight from one corner to the other.
Bench grinder to the rescue.

Care must be taken to keep the edge cool so that the steel doesn't "burn" and lose its temper.

The edge, ground square from corner to corner.  Grinding a new bevel comes next.  Most handplane blades like this one use a bevel of 30 degrees so that's what I will use.

Once the new bevel is ground, it needs honing to remove the coarse grinding marks and to begin to form the cutting edge.

This bevel is well formed but there is a dag of wired edge on the left corner that will hone off on the oilstones as a secondary bevel appears.
This will be honed at 35 degrees along the front edge of the bevel.

I'll use coarse, then fine oilstones, and then finally a hard white arkansas stone for polishing.
This is so similar to the chisel sharpening that I showed back in April 2012 that I will use an image from there:

Just think of this chisel as the Turner plane blade OK.
Sadly, I packaged the blade up and posted it off before getting a shot of the finished bevelled and sharpened edge - rats!

When it arrives  it will go back in Dylan's number 5 Turner plane just like this one:

Happy shavings to all.

Xmouse and New Yers - And Lots of Driving

OK - last post for 2013.
Our children are spread over the width and breadth of this wonderful country, and unlike last Xmouse we are not all able to be together for the celebrations of love and family.
Red dots indicate where our kids are situated:

Soo, this year we are on the road.
A trip to Brisbane to be with our daughter will also include a detour to visit my brother, and time spent with my sister on the outskirts of the city.

For overseas folks - you non-Oz residents - here is a size comparison to show distances compared to the USA and Europe:

The trip to Brisbane is like driving from Eugene Oregon to Oakland California in distance.........

..

..............or from Paris to Nice, or Istanbul to Kosovska Mitrovica, Kosovo ..............

Family time - nothing better.

A few images from the trip:

Brisbane by day..............

....... and by night

............ and from my brother's verandah ................ not in Brisbane  - can you tell .......  :)

...... and so to New Year's Resolutions ..........
................... to finish the ukulele ...hahaha.
 That will re-commence with the first post of the New Year.
Happy 2014 everyone .......... may the fresh year bring you peace, and as much joy as you can handle.

Making A Boat Paddle Tenor Ukulele - Part 5 - Catching Up

Oh my, where has all this time disappeared to?
So much to do around here and the ukulele build has been on the back-burner.
Our home is a large log cabin construction with a fully painted exterior.  The LOML, in her spring cleaning mode, started an outside spruce-up that turned into a full exterior house clean. A huge job!

We last painted the exterior in 1996-97..............
You can see what's coming...............  Now that it is clean let's re-paint, she said.  OK, I replied.  I really love painting .............. hahaha

 (this male king parrot landed on my painting trestle)

Soooooo ........... guess what has occupied my leisure hours of late - we have been painting, and painting and painting ...............

Oh, there was also the rehearsals for the concert by the Tele Point Ukes and Singers.......................

.............and the concert itself..................

trips to Young.................

.............. and Sydney - and my son's engagement to wonderful Edwina .............

........the party ..............

........... gardening .........

................. lots of gardening .........

...... babysitting ............... lots of babysitting ............

............ end of year parties and wrap-up dinners, as well as.........
..........school concerts .................

(......everybody was Kung-Fu fighting ......................)

.................. and woodwork........... well, bits and pieces.
I have found some time to cut and shape the gusset blocks for the ukulele body as well as lay out the fretboard and make a start on the neck.
I'll get back to that in my next post.

Soooooo ........ we are back up to speed.
 Every blessing to you and yours for this season of Xmouse.
May you find some peace...... and in doing so, add a little more joy to the world.

Black Bean - Wondrous Timber

One of my sons is a woodworking teacher at a country high school, and has had the good fortune to work with an old friend from my basket-balling days.
Both Jeff and my son are good wood turners, but Jeff is the master.

I gave him a very unattractive billet of timber from the woodpile recently, because from one clean edge it showed some signs of promising grain.

I wish I had taken some pictures of the block beforehand so that a comparison could be made, but anyhow - here is the result of Jeff's turning magic:

 

 

Jeff P - you are THE MAN!

Making A Boat Paddle Tenor Ukulele - Part 4 - Sides - Bending and Fixing in Place

Bending the Sides to Shape

I use a small bending iron and an atomiser spray.
 

 

The heat from the iron and the sprayed on water act to steam the timber making it soft and pliable.

 Mango is surprisingly easy to bend and it took far less time than the sassafrass of my first uke.

Assembly

The scrap pieces that were cut from the mould now come into play as clamps - holding the sides until dry.

I have positioned the end block in place with a mark down its centre line to keep it correctly positioned.  This will later be glued and clamped.

The waste-clamps are expanded by using nothing more than an expanding toggle, normally used for tensioning wire.  The top shaping blocks are forced apart with nothing more than a simple wedge - see below.

The end block is made from a small piece of Australian cedar - light but strong and with good acoustic properties.  It has been radiused to the same curve as the body at this point.

The two sides meet at the bottom of the body and are held in place by the glued end block.  As you can see, the two sides don't quite meet at the centre line.  I stressed about this in my first uke for a day or more but was never able to establish a clean middle join.
I don't worry about it now, and after the glue dries I will cut a wedge shape exactly in the middle and insert a decorative piece of African blackwood as a feature.

These two pieces will meet at a corner - a potential weak point in the body.  I have decided to strengthen the corner and eliminate the weak join with a small gusset that will also show through as a feature.  African blackwood again. This will come a little later.

I'll glue in the end blocks one at a time. Here, the bottom end block is glued into place.  The top block will come later on and it will have a mortice cut into it to house the tenon on the end of the neck.
Things are taking shape nicely.

Making A Boat Paddle Tenor Ukulele - Part 3 - Skins, Fretboard, Headstock

Nomenclature

Just a quick refresher on the naming of parts of a ukulele so we all know what I'm talking about.

These two ukuleles are of traditional shape - the lower one is a concert size and the upper a tenor. They have different  length necks, and their scales for the fretboard differ as well.
The nomenclature is the same for all ukuleles no matter the shape - even for boat paddle tenors.............
 ........ and for the purposes of this little instalment, I'll refer to the timbers for the front, back and sides of the ukulele body as skins.

Skins

I have already thicknessed all of these parts so they are ready to have their edges dressed for jointing.
Both the front - the soundboard - and the back will be made up of a pair of book-matched pieces of mango that I cut previously.
The joined edges of these two pieces will have to be absolutely straight, so that they glue true and remain strong after the glue dries.
I have made a shooting board so that the edges can be planed truly straight.
Like many things in my workshop, it is made from leftovers and re-cycled material.

A formica covered plywood desk lid and some wormy old jacaranda make up the shooting board.

Here are the skins for the back being jointed.

In the first image, the side skins are being dressed on one side - the edge that will interface with the the top (the soundboard).  These edges need to be dead straight, as the soundboard will be almost flat.  It will have a slight radius, but we'll get to that later.

Fretboard and Headstock

Because the mango for the body has such a pronounced grain pattern, I want the fretboard to be as plain as possible.
I have a piece of African blackwood that will serve nicely.
It is rough sawn and needs to have one side dressed before I re-saw it to thickness.

Man this timber is tough on blades. I had to re-sharpen the plane blade in the middle of this.
This trued edge runs against the bandsaw fence and has to be straight, or the ripping will cut awry.

The result of this cut will see two pieces of different thickness - one for the fretboard, and the thinner piece will supply the headboard and any trim.

This timber is haaarrrddd, and it has to be cut slowly.

Off the saw, it is full of bandsaw marks and needs dressing. I have cut both of these pieces oversize to allow plenty in bringing it back to thickness by planing and sanding.

Here are the finished pieces, showing some very beautiful, but simple, grain pattern.

The relative thickness of each can be seen in this shot - fretboard on the left, headboard on the right.

I'll need a full day to make a start on building the curved sides of the body.
Next time..................