Ukulele Build Part 14

These are some home made cam clamps that will be used to hold the saddle in place for gluing.  They needed to have a fairly long throat to them so that they can reach through the sound hole to where be able to hold where the saddle goes.  The also needed to have sufficient clearance built into the fixed lowermost jaw so that it can clear the internal sound board bracing.  The principle is that when the cam is rotated outward, it causes the movable jaw to bind on the rail and compress the workpiece.  The are made from hard maple and plans can be found on the internet.

Folding wooden book stand

This is this year's birthday present for my wife.  She likes to do her Bible study at the table and I've noticed that she tends to prop up her Bible when she is studying so I designed and built this for her birthday.   Because is fold up it can be taken with her wherever she goes.

The stand is made of maple and the wooden hinges were made with individual pieces since I don't have a drill with the length to make a single pass for drilling the hole for the brass hinge pins.  The finish is shellac that has been buffed with 0000 steel wool for a fine matte finish.

Miniature Stratocaster Pinewood Derby Car

Here is the car that I built for last year's pinewood derby.

It is a miniature Stratocaster Guitar mounted on a chassis that is shaped like a guitar case.  I never raced the car because of fears of destruction as it ran down the track, but it sure looked good!  It is made with a basswood body and maple neck.  A photo of a stratocaster was downloaded from the Internet and scaled to the proper size on the computer before being printed out.  The printed copy was cut up into neck and body sections and pasted onto wood to allow for exact cutouts to be made.  I used grinders, files, sandpaper and other tools to shape the body and neck and then individual fret lines were incised into the finger board with an x-acto knife.  Some 0.25mm wire was glued into each of these fret slots to make actual metal frets and even finer wire was used for the strings of the guitar.  Some scrap sprue from plastic model kits was turned to make the knobs and sheet styrene was used for the finger guard.  Lastly, copper wire and brass tubing were used to make the cable and 1/4 inch jacks to finish out the project.  The body is painted with flaming red lacquer with clear coat over the top.  Here are a couple of other photos of the finished project.