Hana Lima 'I a - day seven

Honestly this is the point where I start to worry about whether the uke will turn out playable. So many steps in this process, so many places to make a minor mistake in measuring or slightly miss a mark when clamping or not sand one area enough. I worry as we head into the final few days: will the uke look ok or will she be a botch job?  Will she sound ok? Will it feel good to hold and play? So many hours invested, so many opportunities for a rookie in the wood shop to make little errors that end up producing a poor result!

Nervously, I move into day seven...

...and Mike saves my bacon!  

Mike doesn't like a student to fail. So he fills the gap between my lack of woodworking skill and my enthusiasm for this building process. Just as I think my worst fears will be realized when Mike says we'll be shaping the squared off timber into a uke neck he reaches for my uke and uses it to demo the process. By doing this he sets me up well along the way to shaping a desirable ukulele neck. I am soooo grateful and relieved. 

This is the day when I realize I am actually over my head here but Mike says 'you're not gonna learn if you're doing stuff you already know how to do!"

Here's Mike cutting the neck to our fretboard width for us. 

This is how the uke looks after the neck trimming:

Then Mike grabs a giant cheese grater rasp and has at the neck taking off the edges and showing us the steps necessary to shape it into a comfortable neck. 

The neck is emerging:

I'm so pumped that we are at this stage that I am able to levitate my uke!

We interrupt the work on the neck to finish the heel cap and to cut out our headstock shape. Another nerve wracking process but again Mike holds my hand and a relatively attractive headstock starts to surface. 

For the rest of the day we rasp, file, sand, fill and sand and sand and sand....100 grit, 120, 180, then we wet the wood to raise the fibres, let it dry and....sand again, this time 220. 

Tomorrow we will...wait for it...sand some more!  But for now, here how she's looking: