Matt Blacka
Junior Uke

Offline

MAKAIO Ukuleles Australia
Posts: 83
Sydney, Australia
Gender:
|
Hi Mark,
I haven't finished this series of ukes yet. I have one that has pretty much been boxed up, and another three that are waiting for their sides to be bent (soundboard, backs, and necks completed though). You can check out the pictures on my website. They are all designed to have a Spanish Heel style of construction.
I redrew the concepts that Asa had posted before, with the angled heel slots, and worked out that the angle I needed was a fraction over 1 degree, to get the soundboard and fretboard to be on the same plane/angle at the neck/body joint. All four necks had their heel slots angled back by as close to this angle as possible.
When I made my domed workboards, I made two for the back dome and three for the soundboard dome. I have since cut one of the domed soundboard workboards down to the same shape of my assembly jig, and modified my original flat-top assembly jig to take the domed board as its surface. I also added an adjustable neck support to the assembly jig, so that I can accomodate the slightly set-back neck angle. For the one uke I have assembled, this modified jig worked very well.
The domed workboards worked fine for sanding and gluing braces using a go-bar deck.
One thing that may be of interest, is that I worked out a modified shape that the sides have to be cut to before being bent, to get the correctly domed soundboard and back profiles. Solving this problem required a combination of maths and CAD to investigate the height that the sides should be at all points around the side, where they join to the back and soundboard. This is a strange three dimenional problem, where the height of the sides at any point depends on the distance of that point from the apex of the dome. This is very different to a side shape for a uke with an arched back and flat top. I can write some more about these calcs if you would like.
Anyway, thats my current position on the domed soundboard/back thing.
Matt
|