Glue that Back back On

You may be wondering, why so many clamps?

I had to remove the back (which was already lifting in various places around the seam) on this Kamaka ukulele to replace a back-brace and reglue another brace on the underside of the top. This is a small soprano uke, so the only way to get inside was to remove the back. The problem was originally caused by dryness. Coming from Hawaii, the instrument did not take well to the dry climate of northern Arizona. Because the instrument had been dried out, braces were lifting and the body was slightly warped.

So, this is why I needed so many clamps to properly glue the back in place. Four of the clamps are being used to simply hold the sides in the correct shape to accept the back into proper position. Because the wood had dried and warped, after the back was removed the sides didn't stay in the same shape... i.e. they were being held in place by the back prior to its removal.

As to why so many different types of clamps were used... I didn't have enough spool clamps for the entire job... also, spool clamps would've gotten in the way of the the clamps that were used to keep the sides in the correct position.

This was a beautiful, authentic Hawaiian uke with some great pieces of koa wood. It was a pleasure to bring this instrument back to life. After the structural work, I did some minor fret work and made a new bone saddle.

-- Ryan Elewaut

Saddle Routing

Here are some pics of one of my favorite jobs... routing saddle slots. This is one of my favorite jobs because this is probably my favorite jig to use. I like to rout saddle slots on the guitar, with the bridge already located and glued. In most circumstances this enables us to actually intonate the proper location for the saddle... a unique privilege for an acoustic guitar. Electric guitars have movable saddles, which makes adjusting the intonation easy. Acoustic guitars have a fixed saddle placement.

So, this series shows two guitars having their saddle slots routed. The first one is a classical, which I was just widening the slot for the purpose of making it clean and true... the original slot was ugly... so I was just making it right. The second guitar is an old Harmony. I was showing Nate (my repair assistant) how to set up the jig and make the rout.

Setting up the jig.














Routing the slot.

Done. (But not a very good pic.)



















Nate's turn. Checking the alignment of the jig.














Routing and watching.














Done. Hard to see the slot in this pic. We routed this as a "through saddle slot," like what you see on older vintage guitars (or vintage-style guitars.)













-- Ryan Elewaut