Early last year I purchased a grab bag of ukulele sets from a luthier getting out of ukuleles — ten sets mixed of tenor, concert, and soprano sizes. All of the plates were joined and loosely profiled. The first ukulele I am building out of this set is a tenor, all quilted Mahogany, for a friend who picked the set out of that stash.
I routed out the channels for the bindings. The back will just have Ebony bindings and the top will have bindings with a maple and a black fibre strip.
I usually do not use CA to glue in the bindings, but have seen a bunch of builds where people do. So I went ahead and used thin CA. I worked slowly, a couple of inches at a time, making sure each piece was seated the way I wanted it before applying the glue.
You will see I am starting to go wild with CA. I pore-filled the ukulele with a finishing-grade CA. I made a bunch of progress this weekend — set the neck angle flat and installed the brass insert into the neck. I will have a glued butt joint but use one bolt as well, mainly for clamping force.
I am loving this Mahogany. I have slowly been padding on Royal Lac over the last few days. The back and sides were pore-filled with CA and sealed with Seal Lac. The top was just sealed with a few coats of Seal Lac.
I padded as much Royal Lac on as I am going to. I did not pore-fill the top, so I levelled the finish a few times and built it back up. It looks good — a slight contrast to the back and sides. I will leave telltale signs of it being a hand-applied finish, but one will have to look closely to see them.
I fussed around with the finish. I was starting to sand it out when I saw that I still had some very thin gaps along the bindings in a couple of places. I filled them with CA, but that meant I needed to clean up the finish again. It always takes longer than you think.
I mostly got lucky with the wood. I make a lot of my instruments on commission, including this one. I also make them for family and some close friends as gifts. I am not in it for income, so my prices go up or down depending on the person and how much I wanted to make the instrument.
Sorry about the playing — at least you can hear it. Kevin said it sounds very bright and quite loud. Herman said even with my playing it sounds like a uke.