Ukulele project

Cleaning and re-organizing the shop, I found big enough top off-cuts to make a couple of concert ukulele tops. Add in the flamed maple sides that were intended to make some binding, and I found myself planning a scrap ukulele project. This is a hands-on course for my two eldest sons into the world of luthiery, hopefully into playing guitar family instruments, and definitely a nice way to spend some father-son time together. I ordered plans for concert size ukulele, and made the mold. The boys will do all the gluing, sanding and everything there is to do, with my help of course. The goal is to make two serious ukes with the quality and beauty you won't find in the music shops nearby, at a very low budget. All we need to buy is the tuners and strings.

Here's the material. Nice flamed bosnian maple
 for the backs and sides, and european spruce
for the tops

Miika's uke will get an ovankol wedge for the three piece back...

...while Kaapo's uke will get flamed sapele wedge. Both of them
 are off-cuts from my previous or to-come projects.
 The backs had to be done of three pieces to make
the maple meet the sides as well. Both the center pieces
will make a strong visual statement as well.

This is my top/back joining method.
The clamping wedges are made of maple.

Bridge slotting jig

I built this simple plywood jig for routing the saddle slot to the bridge. "Cam clamps" hold the piece down firmly against the pocket and provide level surface for the router rail.

This mechanism provides well enough force to keep everything in place

I wanted to use my proper router, for my Dremel doesn't give a clean enough cut. With 3mm straight bit,  the router base needs to fit snuggly in between the side bars, and the end stops define the slot length. Mine is set to 74mm. The rail system is simply clamped down to the base, at exactly right place and angle, of course.

I mark the centerline of the slot to the bridge plank to help the rail placement.

I cut in multiple passes, thus preventing the router from tilting when starting the cut.

A clean cut. The depth of the slot is approximately 1/2 to 3/4 of the saddle height, depending on the latter.

My saddle blanks are a bit oversized for a 3mm slot. A little sanding ensures a tight fit.

Here is the target. The original ebony bridge of this pre-war gem was beautiful, but had too many issues (split in half for instance) to be repaired. The replacement pyramid bridge is still rough, waiting for the time to get in shape.