This was built as a bit of an experiment in a couple of directions. It has an arm bevel and has a new finish. The arm bevel is to make playing more comfortable, and the new finish is harder and more durable than what I was using, and as a added bonus has a wonderful silky feel even on a gloss instrument.
The aromatic Eastern Red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) is also new for me. I rarely see it big enough to make ukuleles, but as I was driving along I saw a line of them that were taken down next to the road. They were about the biggest I have seen, and had been trimmed of lower branches quite a while ago (being along the road) so the wood was pretty knot free, which is a bit unusual for aromatic cedar. The landowner said ‘Help yourself, the power company took them down’. The wood is a bright purple-pink when fresh cut but ages to a warm caramel brown pretty quickly. It turns out to be nice and light but still quite stiff. A good top wood that I would place between the warmth and ‘thickness’ of redwood and the brightness of spruce. Really nice all-around sound.
The mango I cut from some tress taken down by a mango grower friend in Boynton Beach Florida.
Black bog oak binding (2000-4000 years old), black-white-black-white purfling, casuarina fingerboard (with a 10 inch radius) and bridge (a Florida invasive species), dogwood root burl headplate, asymmetric rosette in red abalone pearl (Haliotis rufescens)
