It's a small world

This Concert Uke came in from the wife of the customer that I am building the classical for. There was a large crack about 6 inches long. The only thing that stopped it from getting bigger was a brace on the top. I think this is humidity (or lack of) related, although it looked like there had been some trauma. The uke had sat long enough for one side of the split to move over the other (like platectonics yo!)so I was unable to push the two sides back together.















The way to handle this is to remove enough wood to place a splint in the empty space. Luckily I had some Koa scraps on hand.
Here's the early results:

After this it's just a matter of leveling the spline and blending the lacquer. You can still see where the repair was done but I think it came out nicely. Happy to see this little guy back into playing condition.

In Action!

Just wanted to post a couple of pics from last night at Victrola. Two of my guitars were in action. Me on the acoustic, and the electric with it's owner. I broke a string and luckily was able to play the electric (fortunately also in open G tuning) for the rest of my rare set. Kinda neat to get that opportunity.

Finished with the binding

An update on the classical. Binding is done, I am now preparing the fingerboard for inlays and gluing, fret slots have been cut. The wood binding was interesting. I've always used plastic/ivoroid before which you can just bend into shape, but the wood binding must be bent on the iron. I love this simple tight job, it just looks clean. One of these days I'd love to do abalone purfling, but look at a vintage Gibson j-45 or that 59 Epiphone. The beauty is in the simplicity.