Rosewood/ Spruce/ Snakewood Tenor

Haven't posted any building pics for a while... this body has the first 4 coats of lacquer. The neck is almost ready for finishing. Pores are filled with black tinted paste filler. First was a coat of shellac, then fill, then sanded back, and then let sit for 2 months, while I worked on other projects, as I did not trust the filler not to shrink. The back has a 12' radius. Neck is Black Limba, fretboard is snakewood, peghead veneer is snakewood , grainmatched to the fretboard. Fretboard has a 12-14' compound radius. Everything is bound in Curly Maple. Martin K5 Paua inlay on fretboard and peghead. Curly Maple backstrap. In the pics, the Rosewood splices on the back look substantial, they are not.

What happened at the bottom there Chris? Nicely executed mitres in the bwb at the top of the end graft and run through at the bottom?

Wow, Chris, love the detail.
I like it that you covered the neck block with veneer.
By the way, the kerf linings look interesting. Did you make them yourself?

Some excellent details on this one! I am so crap at binding I tend to avoid it all together. So I'll ask a question about something I do know a bit about; the soundhole size. How did you choose the diameter, and did you consider the area of the side sound port when you did? I've made my soundholes of different sizes, and I prefer making them slightly smaller nowadays.

Beautiful! Thanks for sharing it with us. Looking forward to seeing it finished. Love the snakewood rosette.

Pete, the bwb 'detail', is when my girlfriend walked through the shop. I do not recall what she came to talk about, but it made me forget what I was doing. It was a good lesson. Hopefully I will not make that one again, ever.

The kerfing is the Ryan A4 kerfing. It is cut short on the bandsaw, which leaves a 'falloff' piece of kerfing that will work great for sopranos, when I start making them. I like that kerfing. One set, plus one strip will do 2 instruments. It is super fast to install, very friendly to work with. On subsequent bodies I have cut it slightly less tall.

For the soundhole, I was just guessing, and a very certain guess is that it is not in exactly the correct dimensions. My experience with tuning speaker cabinets makes me believe that soundbbox resonance is very sensitive to slight differences, and also that a side soundport might not necessarily behave like a single hole of the same area. I do not know. This instrument was not where I chose to dig deep into soundports. My first uke, I think the single soundhole was too small. It has opened up seriously since I built it, I am happy playing it, it sounds ok. It does have a harp like quality to the sound, and I suspect this is from too small of a port. My teachers 3 ukes all have what I think are too large of holes, as there is a quality to the sound that I do not care for, also.

When I was putting this together, I studied each of the plates for several days before gluing the top on, and then a couple more before closing it up. This body is lively, cant wait to hear it.

also, the color of the wood is not splotchy, like in the view of the side, that is a trick of the light, that the camera/ processing played. It is nicely consistent in the flesh.

Probably won't use the zip flex much in the future. It looks great for tying sailfish flies. It does not look like real shell. It is easy bling though, if just barely.

Wow, Love it.

I'm glad you'll be avoiding Zipflex. As clever and ingenious as this product is it looks fake... And I am also glad the purflin malfunction was that and not a design decision I knew there had to be a good explanation This is lovely stuff Chris. Nice clean precise building. If you have the top thicknessed properly this should sound great

Beautiful Chris.
Real shell takes me about 10-15mins per uke side to install, so zip flex aint no money saver and looks like what it is, .....as does real Paua shell......

Chris_H said:

Pete, the bwb 'detail', is when my girlfriend walked through the shop. I do not recall what she came to talk about, but it made me forget what I was doing. It was a good lesson. Hopefully I will not make that one again, ever.

Click to expand...

She must have said or done something really good for you to forget.

I love mitred lines and personally feel that the luthier didn't go "all out" if a uke doesn't have it. If ukes were only based on aesthetics, you would be way up there...I really hope this one sounds great too!

Yikes! Almost too pretty to use

It has now been sanded completely dead flat, and the final coats of lacquer applied. Now it will sit for at least 3 weeks before polishing.

Love the Ryan kerflings! Now if you could only figure out Kevin's recipe for his micro pearl

Beautiful. I like the way you veneered the neck block.....how cool is that.

I like the veneer on the neck block too, rather than exposed Baltic Birch. However, next time I will use a slightly thinner veneer to save a gram or 3. The first uke I built feels like air, it is so light it is almost not there. Everyone who touches it comments on that, first. Because of that, I did not watch the weight on this body. By the time the zip-flex, the Rosewood, the Snakewood, the extra 2-3mm on the kerfing, the thick veneer on the headstock block, weighed in, the body is sitting in at around 10.5 oz, which I read might be on the heavy side. I understand that absolute weight does not necessarily matter, but, in hindsight, another .5oz, maybe more could have been shaved. I am happy with the thickness of the rims, that is good to me. Also, the back and top, I think they are in a good place thickness wise.

here is the next in line.. It will be trimmed in curly Koa. The Redwood top is from a dead QS billet that yielded 14 tenor tops, for $60 shipped. If you look closely, you can see the ray fleck in the curl, though it is so curly that the ray fleck only surfaces here and there. It is very stiff for Redwood.

i first i thought whoah! i was looking at the uke im working on lol. nice work Chris. im working on an exact combo, shells and all lol.

which one weerpool?