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.