Starting on the next set of 4.
#50 – A ‘Florida’ tenor with casuarina (harvested in Florida by me) back & sides and cypress top. The casuarina is from a log I have not used before, and it has a real nice ‘bees-wing’ type figure. Should be stunning when finished.
This ukulele will be a donation to the Bailey-Mathews National Seashell Museum in Sanibel Florida (my sister is executive director) for their winter fund-raising auction. This will have extensive ‘mollusc’ inlays and the Baily-Mathews logo in pearl (which I have already done) on the headstock.
#51 – A baritone with curly walnut back and sides (walnut from my local sawmill) and an ancient sitka spruce top provided by the customer.
#52 – A concert in spalted sycamore and streaky redwood top, with a bit of what should be real fun custom inlay. The ‘Piping Pig’.
#53 – A casuarina and curly redwood topped tenor, with a somewhat different rosette design and an interesting fingerboard/headplate, made from one piece of bocote so the grain is continuous up the fingerboard onto the headplate. This uses the same casuarina, from the same log as #50, and has the same ‘bees-wing’ type figure.
Now, about that walnut for #51. I got around to re-sawing the board this morning and it raises a design decision. You see, the board has some really nice light sapwood, which actually has some streaks of color in it (not just cream white), though the curl is more pronounced on the other edge of the board, the part that was further into the center of the tree. So, when one book-matches the two halves together, which way should one do it?
The first option it to have most of that sapwood in the center for a dramatic center stripe, though one loses a bit of the curl on what is now the outside:
Or one could cut back on the sapwood to make a more narrow center streak, and thus pull in a bit more of the curly outside. (Here simulated by overlapping the two pieces:
Or one could forgo the sapwood entirely and do the book-match the other way, to get the maximum curl and walnut grain pattern:
Which way to go? Hmmmmm….
I think I’ll bail out on this and let the customer decide. How’s that for passing the buck!
(In case anyone out there is interested, I have one more set of this wood. That is all I got from this one small plank found going through the stacks at the mill.)