We made a fair bit of progress on Saturday.
First thing we did was to transfer the bracing lines from the plan to the top and back. The back has two lateral braces. The top has two lateral braces and a small fan brace pattern around the bridge plate.
Braces glued and clamped. The underside of the braces have a radius on them, which will put the radius on the back.
Before the bracing for the top can be glued the rosette needs to be done. It's a very simple rosette made from five pieces of purfling, white-black-white-black-white. The channel for the rosette has been routed by Stewmac.
Dry fitting the purfling.
Purfling cut to length. The cut needs to be very accurate as the top of the rosette is not covered by the fretboard, so the whole rosette is visible.
Gluing was actually very simple. With the rosette inlaid you just run some thin superglue on the inside and outside of the ring, like so
The superglue stays on the surface of the wood, so a light touch with a orbital sander and it's all done.
While we were waiting for the back braces to dry we started sanding the sides flat. Lots of back and forth on some 220 grit sandpaper stuck to a flat surface. The sides are now prepped for gluing the back and top.
Finally, after the back braces set, we tackled the first bit of brace carving. (In the photo the bracings look rather skew. After taking the photo I immediately checked the alignment and it's fine. It must be the camera/lens playing tricks on the eyes) It's very delicate work using a very sharp chisel. They're not very uniform, but by the last one we sort of figured out the best way to carve. We're not to stressed about it, the back bracing are more for strength. The bracing on the top are responsible for sound, so we'll practice a bit more before tackling those.
That's where we are so far! It doesn't look like too much, but the above is a good couple of hours worth of work! ?
It's even more fun than I anticipated. I'm also even more grateful that we chose to do the uke first. We're learning loads and I reckon we'll score a kickass uke when we're finished.
EDIT: Forgot the add that we our first scare... we noticed a small crack at the top of the curve of the lower bout of the sides. It was in the middle of a small bit of wavy grain. Maybe two millimetres long and very thin, but still a crack. We gave it a quick dab of superglue and clamped it with some wax paper. 10 minutes later and the crack is gone... ??? Nothing too serious, but a scare none the less.
