Ukulele Part 5: Cleaning up the body

DIY at it's best?

What we have here is a failure to communicate.  Or rather - a failure to connect.  For those just joining us - the blue guy in the above photo is a pattern-following router bit.  The ball-bearing follows the shape of the Uke body and the spinning blade of death trims the overhand to be flush with that body (or anything the ball bearing touches, really).  The part that's messed up is that space between the router "table" and the Uke body on the left side of the image.  Either the router table (it's really just a router bolted to a piece of particle-board) is warped or the uke body is warped.  My money is on both of them being warped/bowed/out of true.  We're equal opportunity here at Jerry's house of mistakes.  All comers are welcome.

In the end - it doesn't appear that this gap caused any issues - although it's bugging me enough that I'm going to make or purchase a new router table after this Uke project is finished.

It's amazing anything gets done around here...

But, I've never been known for perfection, so we'll make due...

What we are doing today is removing the overhang on the top and back.  This kit (and indeed most guitar kits) ship with the top and back faces that overhang the sides.  You then scrape, carve, sand, or route away that extra.  I use a router because it usually is cleanest and fastest.  It is also the most likely to cause mayhem - as we will see.

Blurred lines?  Sadly, not blurred enough.

The dark line in the above photo is dried glue.  The reason you can see the dark line is because the top wasn't tight enough to the sides.  Seeing as there was close to 40 pounds pushing the top to the sides (see the last post) the problem was likely that the sides were not sanded flat enough.  It shouldn't be a problem but we'll see.

Son of a...

Speaking of problems...
I mentioned how routers are fast, right?  Yup!
I also mentioned how they cut clean lines, correct?  Check!
So, here's the mayhem part I mentioned.  Routers are great at causing tear-outs in the end-grain.

Think back to shop-class in 4th grade and the bored Shop teacher telling you to sand with the grain or cut across the grain.

This is what he was talking about  (my shop teacher was a guy - picture your own shop teacher in your own damn mind).

If the router blade catches the end-grain (as in the end of the wood-grain) it can grab it and cause a chip (tear-out).  No lie - this was a bummer.  But between rounding over the top, doing a little pore-filling, and maybe a touch of wood putty - I think I can make this one disappear.  It looks bad but not hopeless.

That will NOT buff right out...

As an aside - there is a way to minimize the potential for tear-out.  You feed the wood into the router in such a way that you don't spend a lot of time routing the end grain.  This photo from the StewMac site shows what I'm talking about:

Swell

So, we move forward.  One of the ways to help minimize the goofs (and to help with the process of adding a protective finish) is to raise the wood grain by getting it wet.  That is why you may see some white specs in the above picture.  I wiped a wet paper towel all over the surface of the Uke to raise the grain and the white spots you see are paper-towel lint.

Grain Raising

Normally you want to use a damp rag but in this case, I was hoping that by really wetting the wood I would get some seams to close and the grain to really rise.  It seems to have worked a little.  As you can see, rags are preferable to paper towels as there is less lint but the lint will disappear when I start sanding.

Last little bits.

The dark splotches in the above pics are specks of dried glue.  I'll sand those off while I'm finish sanding the rest of the body.  The only thing that you need to keep in mind is that the back and sides are laminated wood and the laminates are super thin and thus easy to sand through. I'm using 220 and 320 grit sandpaper.  Anything courser would probably sand right through the top laminate - and that would be another bummer.