Building a Travel Ukulele: Sanding.

There wasn’t a lot of magic to today’s work. My time was probably 29% filing, 70% sanding with successively finer sandpaper, and 1% brushing dust.

A few notes:

Filing. I bought a set of files years ago at Ace Hardware. They had a bargain bin and a set of files – with one missing. I asked for a discount, got it, and these have served me well ever since. I found it helped to brush these off as I worked.
Sanding. I’ve had a modest selection of sandpaper ever since I started work on my first 3D printer kit back in 2009. On this project I used 100, 120, 150, 400, and 1500 grit sandpaper. I believe the last two are “wet” sanding paper, but I kept the process dry – occasionally hitting the board and the paper with my brush.
Gouges. I really went after these and was able to file them out for the most part. However, there are a few spots left. The gouge marks are small and I really felt like I hit diminishing returns on my effort.
Fretboard. After a little agonizing, I decided to sand the fretboard lightly. Now it’s smoother, but all the pencil lines are completely gone. Since yesterday I’ve come up with some ideas on how to put these back on.1

The result is a very smooth vaguely ukulele neck shaped piece of wood. It is very nice to hold.

I found that no matter how finely I sanded the piece, once I rubbed it with a piece of cloth2 I could feel the smallest little burs afterwards. I think some of this may just need wait until after the first layer of finish.

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I believe most of the “outside work” is done now. I need to:

Cut the cotter pins into frets. Sand the ends down so they’re not sharp.
Measure and redraw zero fret, frets, and bridge lines.
Glue down the zero fret, frets, and bridge lines. I would estimate roughly 99% of the chords I play are A, F, C, G, D, Dm, E7, Em, and a few similar such chords. Really, nothing past the first fret marker. I’ll probably do this in the evening when the weather is slightly cooler, so I can have better ventilation.
Once the frets are glued in place, I would probably sand between them again. I didn’t want to make the fretboard too smooth, otherwise I might have removed some of the texture needed to form a good bond between the metal and the wood.
Measure, adjust design, re-print, and install the turn around.
I haven’t given any thought to fret markers or side fret markers. I should probably do so now.
Once I’ve decided about the fret markers, I would then move on to the finish. From viewing Daniel’s videos and other woodworking videos recently, I would wear some gloves, brush and dust the wood, apply the finish with a cloth, and then sand while it was still wet – so the sawdust could go into any open pores. I’d probably sand again with the 1500 grit sandpaper, finish / sand again, and then move on to the wax.
I have some ideas to prevent the string ends from being too pokey. Perhaps 3D printed string beads or perhaps tying the string around a 3D printed item and fed back into the holes for the strings.

DIY Travel Soprano Ukulele

Basically re-printing my design, putting hole punches in, putting the paper down, and marking the lines again [↩]
My shirt [↩]

2 thoughts on “Building a Travel Ukulele: Sanding.”

One trick when sanding is to spray it with water, wait until the wood grains swell then sand then back. This makes for a smoother surface after you paint the finish on.
A

Dude!!!! Thank you!!! I’ll give this a shot!

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