Pre-war gem strung

The pre-war repair project is now strung and found out to be an absolute player! You can check back in the blog to see the condition the guitar was brought in. My aim was not to restore the guitar as a museum object, but a playing instrument. So some support was added to the neck block, and the neck joint was converted from a badly made dovetail to a well made bolt on. The soft and worn out vintage frets were replaced with new ones. In addition, I had to make a new pyramid bridge to replace the split and warped original. The bridge relocated, and the saddle properly compensated, the guitar plays in tune for the first time in its 100 years, I believe. Anyway, this again is one of those guitars I will hate to depart with when that time comes.

Here's two simple samples of the sounds. The Billie Holiday classic from 1939 just had to be sung with this guitar. Imagine it was already 25-30 years old when that song was written! Sorry about the out of tune singing. There's no bridge relocation for that. Just practice.

God bless the child
Virsi 184

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.