Favilla back glue up

The back is finally together on the Favilla.

What a pile of stuff for this job.

Both parts stayed nice and flat. I took a chisel to the blue cloth leftovers and scraped them off where it would matter. I'll scrape the rest tomorrow.

I've got the go bar deck ready to go.

Hide glue needs to be placed quickly, since it has a short open time. I took only one picture during the process. The Go bar deck was wonderful.

Everything is in place, including some reinforcements that I cut at a 45 degree angle so that they will hold the cracks tight without splitting themselves.

I also worked some more on the Cuatro, or at least my plan for the Cuatro. 

The radius of this coffee can just about matches the radius of this side.

I sanded this caul so that it would match the outside.

Then I used the coffee can to sand an inside caul to the correct radius. It took a few tries to get the two to match.

Well hey, look at that. I had to trim the inner caul, since it has a rather thin spot to work in, but it should be fine.

Favilla front completed!

I had a few hours today, and got pretty far with what I wanted to get done.

First, I wanted to finish assembling the Favilla.

I made some thin slices of mahogany for reinforcement - that section of the top is so damaged, I don't want to take any chances.

After making the reinforcements, I was ready to glue. Look carefully at this picture - see anything missing?

See it now? I assembled the whole thing without the wax paper underneath. I would have ended up with a big chunk of poplar glued to the front of the uke if I hadn't caught this. The paper was there, and blew away before I started gluing. I disassembled the whole mess, and put it together again WITH the wax paper in place.

I then turned my attention to the cuatro I worked on a few months ago.

Yep, still damaged.

I scribed a line to make a cut in the side to improve access. I don't want to remove this side yet - it is reinforcing the well-cracked top at this point.

My knife made quick work of the side.

I'll need to glue a side crack, but being rather curved, I can't just put a flat caul there. I have some cork gluing up to a chunk of plywood in preparation for the glue job.

The I decided to pull out the Kamake pineapple uke and see what I could get done.

I discovered that the finish over the original finish peeled of rather easily.

See? The chisel just slides under the later finish, leaving the original surprisingly intact.

I took all the over-finish off of the headstock, and was thrilled to see the original Kamaka finish underneath.

I was able to get most of the finish off the front, too.

I wonder if this is the reason for the over-spray? This is messy looking, but no reason to cover the whole dang instrument in gunk.

I am rethinking my plan for that uke now. Perhaps I can simply scuff-sand the original finish, and apply some more shellac over it and renew it that way. That would be mighty tough to do on the curved sides, though, so I might have to stick with stripping the whole thing.

This afternoon, I pulled the Favilla from the go-bar deck.

Not bad. I actually never saw it looking like this - the chunk under the extension came off with the neck. It glued on nice and flat. The whole top is now pretty flat, for that matter, and all the glue joints are solid, except the bridge, which I will remove later.

I made a couple tracings of the uke.

I cut out the tracings, and now I have two cauls to clamp the back together with tomorrow. I'll assemble the whole thing at once - the two back pieces, the two braces, and the reinforcement for the crack. Since it is all meant to be flat, I don't have to use a radius dish or anything like that.

Not a bad day.

Banjo headstock fixes, and flattening some back pieces

Well, once again I have several days of work to cover .


First, a few days ago I managed to get the headstock glued together on the tenor banjo.

The headstock cracks look much worse now that the thing has been cleaned.

All the supplies are ready - glue, gloves, clamps, knife, acetone, and paper towels. The acetone cleans up the CA glue nicely.

I didn't skimp - I poured glue on, and worked the cracks open and closed a few times to work the glue in.

Then some clamps, and a wipe with acetone, and it is ready to sit for a while.

The next day, I put some thought into the back of the Favilla baritone uke. I needed to flatten the back pieces so that I could try to get them to mate back together.

I set up the go-bar deck, wet the back, and clamped it flat. It didn't work - the piece was still curled.

I also spent some time making a bow reharing jig. It was slow work carving. I'm making progress though.

So, two days ago, I used a different strategy to flatten the baritone back.

That is a granite surface plate on a barbecue. Yummy. No, actually, I'm heating up just enough to be too warm to touch for long, but no warmer. I then wet the baritone back, and clamped it down.

I  added a sheet of absorbent cloth to wick the water away, and clamped the heck out of the back. It took a couple of hours for the heat of the granite block to dissipate. I left it clamped up for two days to really allow it to dry and flatten out.

This leads up to today's work. Of course, being summer, I was also taking my son to camps, visiting friends, and going to swim practice. But when I had a couple opportunities, I got some work done.

I was very happy with this - when I took the back piece out of the clamps, it was almost dead flat. There is a lot of fluff stuck to the old glue, but that is no big deal.

I'm sure it will want to curl up again, so I clamped it to a flat piece of wood for storage.

I then proceeded to clamp the other side to hot granite.

I cut a couple of overly-large patches for the top of the baritone uke. Again, these cracks are ready to pop apart and curl up, so I want the extra acreage to keep things flat and happy.

I need to put a handle on this - my new violin maker's knife! What a sweet thing it is too.

I was going to clamp the busted pieces back to the front, but I decided to wait and do this a different way - I want to be able to see them when they are clamped, so I'll use some acrylic for a clamping surface.

Since the bridge is still on, I have to raise the uke on some boards to keep the bridge away from pressure.

I love the amount of pressure this thing develops.

Turning my attention back to the tenor banjo, I decided to go ahead and drill out the holes.

This bit is about the size of the rod.

"Before I kill you, Mr. Bond..." The mill vise helps here, because I can position the neck perfectly for drilling.

It works!

Those are some big holes.

Same routine as the other day - acetone if I need it, and some thick CA glue.

I made a puddle of CA glue on a discarded plastic bag,

I put some glue on a cotton swab,

And put the glue in the holes.

I then was able to install the rods without any nasty squeeze out. Not bad.

Then it was time to cut the rods flush. Kind of a pain.

Slow, finicky work.

Pretty close, I carved them the rest of the way with a couple of flat chisels.

I then failed to take pictures of drilling new holes in the rod. It did not go very smoothly - I might redo a couple of holes, we'll see. Or I might mix up some CA glue and a lot of ebony dust and fill in some flaws. We'll see.

Tomorrow, Ray and I will be working on the basses again. Oh boy!