We start the real thing

So I have begun the Weiss. I broke out the bender and mold this morning, cleaned off all the mahogany dust and took out some "practice" mahogany. Here is the first try. Not bad. The waist is a pretty sharp bend and the pipe may be a bit to large a diameter. I may set up a torch based pipe to tighten it up.

Back on track

Well, I've built four and sold three cigar box ukulele's!!!! The last of the herd is hanging in the local music store, House of Musical Traditions. With my profits (hahaha), I've bought a mahogany weissenborn set, so its off to the races. Should be here any day. Stay tuned.

So, I am long term distracted (at least for a month or so). Above is my jig for drilling the hole for a threaded insert into the neck blank.

I showed the finished ukuklele to the owner House of Musical Traditions, a local purveyor of cool instruments of all sorts. He wanted to sell them if I made more (some of the staff wanted the "prototype" on the spot.). I demurred, being it was my first attempt with several flaws. So I am making two more for his display.



The near one is another Romeo Y Julieta Box, but all red and a little deeper. It will sport a solid catalpa top like the prototype, a three piece mahogany/maple/mahogany bolt-on neck, rosewood fretboard (1/4" this time, so with side dot markers as well), saddle and headstock veneer. The far one is a Padron Delicias box with the original plywood top. The owner of HMT wanted a "funkier" model to see if they'd sell. It will have a two piece mahogany bolt-on neck(same source as the prototype), no headstock veneer, all else the same. As the top is bit thick, I expect this one will be quieter. Might get a piezoelectric pickup once I finish stringing it up and testing its tone. The glue on the bookmatched catalpa top is dying as I write. More later

Finished!!

See the video. And site. More on the Weissenborns here, as it happens. Hmmm. Lowebro?

Box

So onward. Used a "tone bar" approach to bracing. Glued on as two rectangular pieces of scrap maple and then shaped with chisel and my Stanley #100. Titebond II all around. Here's where we are now.


Fretboard tonight. I decided on the "mezzo soprano" scale (14 1/8"). Concert (15") a bit too long and Soprano (13") a bit too short.

The Cigar Box Ukulele Distraction

Adult ADD is a terrible thing. I started this ukulele last summer after looking at Kathy Matsushita's web site and finding I had extra mahogany and some cigar boxes on hand. Kathy has a nice cigar box build described. Above is the neck blank according to her process. I am making this a concert scale uke (14" scale). The box is a Romeo Y Julieta box, 8" long. It sat till last weekend when I made the catalpa top. I had bought a piece of 1/8" rosewood and a rosewood "pen set" at Woodcraft. The latter is perfect for two bridges the former for two fretboards. I took the bottom off the box and added a mahogany heel block, mahogany reinforcements the the corners and maple strips for gluing surfaces. I scraped away the paper on all gluing surfaces.



Here's the neck with the "insert" in place and rough carved. The Safe-T-Planer is great for thinning the peghead.




More distractions as they happen.

Practice, practice

I decided that trying my first bookmatched top with 40" long seam was heroic at best, so I thought I'd start out smaller. I had bought a large piece of "rescue" catalpa from my friends at Community Forklift when the bandsaw was new and tried my hand at resawing. I got some clean, narrow pieces, but the saw wasn't tuned up enough to cut 10" wide tops and bottoms from it. I put the booked matches 1/4" sheets aside as the had lots of pin knots as well.

I got them out yesterday and found a clean section long enough to be the top for a cigar box instrument. I had cut a couple of ukulele necks from mahogany left over from the mooncake mandoline project. I purchased a section of thick counter top of Communtiy Forklift to be the auxiliary table for use my Safe-T-planer on the drill press.


Its dead flat and real rigid. I jointed the 1/4" plates using a simple shooting board and plane, then 150 grit sandpaper sitting on top of my (you guessed it) Community Forklift granite counter top. They were then "tented" over a paintstick and the edges trapped between some finishing nails driven into a piece of flat scrap plywood. Tightbond II for the center seam, and a couple of dead lead acid batteries to hold the seam down while drying. I then thicknessed the top on the Safe-T-planar to 0.100".


The picture above is after light sanding with 150 grit to remove most of the mill marks (I was getting late for work) and then some mineral spirits to look at the figuring. The wood is a beautiful butterscotch color. a mahogany grain structure, and a lovely tap tone. I'm getting there!!

Heads and ........

So onto the tail block. Never wanting do do anything simple the first time, I used concepts from Alex Willis' "Step By Step Guitar Making" to fabricate a 3 piece tail block. The idea is not to have any gluing surface be end grain, as its a sponge for the glue and makes a weak joint. So I took more of the mahogany and created the "H" with the grain running vertically up the vertical leg and the two "T"s with the grain running along the thickest dimension.



The mortises on the "H"s were cut on the band saw and then chiseled out to fit. The tenons on the "T"s were done on the band saw and some cleanup with chisels. The pieces are glued together


and when dry, I trimmed to size on the band saw and then switched from the 3/4" blade to the 1/4" blade to cut out the "waste" and the "ogee" reduce the weight, finishing with a 1" diameter Forstner bit to create a flat for the eventual installation of a pickup.



So what next? Build a kerf-lining jig? Buy the wood to build the thing? Get distracted by another side project? Who knows?

A new year and progress

So, I've returned from a hiatus from instrument making. I found this gorgeous piece of mahogony at the local Woodcraft. I decided to get onto the headstock. As you can see, I am using a slotted headstock. The tuners will be added upside down to allow for easy access.

I took the dimensions from the SketchUp "Virtual build" and laid it out. Much easier than I had thought. Nice to have a Stanley #100 plane and sharp chisels. Next........The end block.

Long time no blog.

I've been in the meta-woodworking phase for a while now.

I designed and have mostly constructed a dust collector from a used furnace motor, rescue plywood, some steel for reinforcing the hangers and sweat equity. I started to do the dadoes for the channels to take the filter elements and realized I've been pretty sloppy on my table saw dadoeing.

So... First build a high detachable fence to ride on the ripping fence. Then an adjustable feather board tied to an Incra miter slide and finally a feather board for the top.

The long dadoes were spot on!!!! I'll include some pictures at some point. I'm also getting tired of my very useful but clumsy shop vac/Dust Deputy Cyclone siamese twin combination. It tips over and gets caught on everthing, so the next not-planned-for project for is a dolly for that. At least I've got all the parts.

Meanwhile, I unloaded an amplifier I never use and used to proceeds to buy a Steward MacDonald fret saw and miter box and a Safe-T-Planer to use with the drill press (Du-oh, need to build an auxialliary table/fence for that too!!!)

Slow and steady

Had an old dial indicator and lots of left over MDF. so......



A Charles Fox style thickness gauge. Thank you Kathy Matsushita for the idea.

I found some rosewood for a fretboard, and for a bridge. Onto the ukulele top.

Bench #1 done!!!

So I finished my first workbench. Its 49 x 24 with a 7" vise. The top has a array of 3/4" holes for hold-downs and bench dogs. The front jaw of the vise as well.



The top is 3 3/4" layers of MDF skinned with 1/4" hardboard.

The thing is on casters so it can be moved around our small shop/laundry.


Finally, I found a used 15" drill press, so not more excuses.



I have the requisite minimum set of power tools to build. So.. Onward!!!!! Oh, and the Ikea counter top is now, of course, dead flat. It will end up being the top of bench #2, whenever that happens

Well........

Its been raining here in the greater DC area for several days (or has it been weeks). I cut the two MDF boards to size for the top of the bench and picked up the 5/8" IKEA top to cut it and found...



I mean serious warped. The center the bulge is about 1/4" high (low). The MDF is fine. I suspect the nice people at IKEA oiled the top surface and not the bottom (which is the side that swelled).

I've decided to go with a third layer of MDF and laminate 1/8" hardboard all around to finish it.

Maybe the hardwood will flatten and can be used for a table. Or a bowl.

Rolling benches

So four hours later, the frame has retractable casters. Essentially, there are a set of rails



inset inside the legs (from 2 x 4s) and a pair of 2 x 4 hinged with two 2 1/2 swivel casters. The picture on top is the caster plate folded under the frame, lifting the bench about 3/4 inches off the floor. All held together and to the legs with lag bolts. To engage/disengage the caster, lift up an end and grab or kick the casters with your foot. Lower tech than the table saw base. But it works well.




Next, gluing up the top. But first, need a cutting guide for the circular saw. Meta projects.

Benched

I've been off-line for a bit. Suffering from the dog-in-Rome syndrome. I started getting parts in for my drum sander (24" width). Then I got a bunch of great cigar boxes and thought, "I'll make a CB ukulele". Then came a dial guage and I thought, "I'll make a thickness guage". I then realized, " I have too many projects started and nowhere to carry them out."

So the current project is the bench above. Its 24 x 49 and ~35" high. It will have a 7" vise under the overhang. The top is two layers of 3/4" MDF and an IKEA 5/8" counter-top. The base of 4x4 legs with 2x4 spreaders and 3/8" threaded rod to hold it together. I plan to put casters that fold out of the way so I can move this around.

The Bends, and the Bender

So here is Big Bertha, the side bender.

I abandoned the idea of using the hot plate controller when 1) I realized the little nichrome coil is a "booster" that compensates for the heat loss of the huge aluminum bracket that thermally connects the heating element to the bimetallic strip contact. So it would not have really worked. Since the charcoal-starter was 500 Watts, a simple 600 watt dimmer works just fine and is more compact. And a mere 6 dollars

Bending the heater was tricky and in fact, I overbent it producing a "crack" in the outer copper, which is filled with a long nichrome coil and sand.

The exposed coil was not shorted to the copper shield and still heats evenly so I stuffed it down the 2" pipe, supporting the terminal ends with a wad of aluminum foil to keep the leads centered and not shorting each other. This was wired to the dimmer. The whole things sits on rescue plywood.

I plugged it in and...... no go. So out with the multimeter. And it was fine, but I had the "on" and "off "confused. The exposed nichrome makes a handy initial heads up for whether the coil is heating. I'll borrow a IR temperature gauge from work on Tuesday and calibrate.

Meanwhile, I had to try it. I trotted off to the local Woodcraft and bought a couple of pieces of 1/16" walnut. On and "sizzling", I tried to start bending. This is an incredibly tactile process. Initially, nothing was happening even with the wood drying out and sizzling. At some currently unknown temperature, the springy, stiff board yielded like soft metal, wrapping itself around the 2" diameter pipe almost effortlessly. Its a magical feeling to hold this sinuous piece of wood that was just moments before a straight board.

The wood was 1/16" which is a little thin for guitar side (0.090" to 0.085"). I am planning to build a thickness sander next from plans I got off the web (that will take a while), so I am looking around locally for a place to get some wood (mail order) and thickness it elsewhere.

Off to Baltimore for fireworks tonight and Community Forklift tomorrow (a Federal holiday) to look for rescue wood, steel rods and pulleys for the sander. TTFN and a Happy 4th.

Scrounging parts - The physical chemist's trade

I've started to build the bending iron from a design on the web shown here. I bought a foot and a half of 2" diameter steel pipe, 3 feet of 5/16" threaded rod and an appropriate number of nuts and washers. The poor dead beast above just needs the heating element and to be attached to a platform. The electric charcoal starter is on the way (Home Despot no longer sells them). I've got ridiculous amounts of scrap 3/4" plywood to make a base. One remaining question. How to control the temperature?

Being an out of practice physical chemist, I thought, buy a temperature programmer, but $150 later, it seemed less appealing. The the idea of a 1000W dimmer seemed crude. No good way to get reproducible settings. Then I remembered the words of my Ph.D. advisor: "scrounge". I dug out the old Thermolyne hot plate behind my power tools collecting dust (so much for the grand organizational effort).

I opened it up and found the answer, a bimetallic heat control in parallel with the hot plate surface. So all I need to do is disconnect the hot plate element (the red wires) and connect the charcoal starter. Voila! The best part is, it doesn't destroy the hot plate so I can use if for heating other goodies at a later date.

Stay tuned!!!

A sense of accomplishment - The Mold

So with a long quiet afternoon, and the shop now non-chaotic, I finished the mold. Most of the actual work was leveling the pine "walls" of the mold to the plywood faces. I found the best tool for this to be a surform rasp. It gobbled up the pine and left the ply mostly alone.

I measured the final dimensions - lower bout 15 1/2 inches, waist 8 1/2 inches and upper bout 10 inches. From the nut to the tail - 31 1/2 inches. Note that the space for the peghead is oversize so that I can make a variety of headstock designs on this basic body.

Now onto the electric charcoal grill starter-based side bender...Later

A pause in the action

I need to put building on hold while I organize (note I did not say reorganize) the workshop. At least guitar building. I am going to make a mobile base for the table saw. The old Sears casters are poor at best. Here is the model I'm following.

About the shop.....

I don't have one. I share our "basement" with the water heater, washer, dryer, pantry and storage. So things can, and will get chaotic. One thing I have invested in is a dust collection system. Its minimal, but works well. Its a Dust Deputy.I bolted it onto my aging Genie (no longer made) shop vac. No more filters, no more dust blowing out the top. No more sawdust in my dress shirts. Nice.