What's happening in your shed?

Just to show things don't always go as planned in the shop, I just came in from cleaning the garage after routing out the set of spalted Sycamore bindings I had installed on my kiku body over the last 2 days. Spalted Sycamore has to be the most unforgiving wood I’ve ever tried to bend, even worse than curly Maple. The stuff split if I looked at it the wrong way, and the fibers also seemed to tear when I was scraping the dried bindings. I tired bending the strips both wet and dry, and had my LMI bending pipe on high by the time I was done. Despite the cracks, I still went through with the binding job, taping and clamping the cracked areas tightly as the glue set. The bindings were nice looking after scraping and sanding – except for the places where the cracks had been glued. Those stood out prominently in my eyes, so off they came.

I don’t know if the fungus that caused the spalting caused the Sycamore to break so easily, but I have some un-spalted Sycamore on hand, so I think I’ll cut the new binding strips from that. But not today or tomorrow. I think I'm going to take a day or two away from the sawdust.
 
The spalting is the first step ofthe layer of wood rotting. It is no wonder it had a tendency to separate.
 
A Tahitian style travel uke in Cherry and spruce. 20 inches overall.
DSCF0001.jpg
 
Added some new accessories this morning. One can never have enough clamps, and these will help when I'm laminating neck stock.

pipe clamps.jpg
 
Thanks, guys. Sam, I cut the rosette channels with a dremel in the stewmac base witha homemade circle cutting jig which is just a piece of wood with nail holes for different radii. 3/64 downcut bit from lmi. Strips of walnut, bent to rings. Nothing fancy.

Jerry, the carving was all done with a paring chisel. Quite primitive and rough. Juat something that to be done.
 
Every now and then someone comments adding a bigger body to a concert ukulele. This one has a standard concert scale, but with a body that is almost as big as a tenor. The body length is compressed to keep the bridge in the proper location. The cutaway was added to give access to the upper frets.
DSCF0004.jpg
DSCF0001 (8).jpg
 
ukantor said:
Hmmm - nice looking proportions.:cool:
Click to expand...

Thanks...I tried to keep things in balance. It works to put a long neck on a small body, but it doesn't necessarily work in reverse.
 
Tenor body coming together

Some imperfections and goof ups to work on, but overall success so far.
 
In addition to my kiku build, this week I've been refreshing strings on several instruments I've built for myself over the past couple of years. My steel string baritone got a set of Thomastik Infeld/John Pearse Folk Fingerstyle strings. I ordered a custom packet of strings 2-5, and they're the best sounding strings I've tried on this instrument. Today I put a set of Oasis GPX clear fluoro strings on my Spruce and Red Oak tenor. I was going to put a set of PhD low D strings on my sinker Western Red Cedar and bees wing Black Walnut baritone, but the friction tuners I have on it don't hold tune well. I previously had a set of Gotoh UKA-4B tuners on it, and one of the plastic buttons stripped out. I thought about getting a set of Waverly friction tuners for it, then decided to go all in and order a set of Gotoh UPT-L tuners. Friction tuner problems solved.
 
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