The customer brought in the instrument with a larck crack in the top. It was a clean break so gule up went well. The seam was raised and glue dabbed in, then realined and the excess glue wiped a way. A day was allowed for each step of the process to progress so the glue would hace no issues.
The cleat material is sitka spruce. he ruler provides scale.
Had to make this cleat tool to hold the cleat in place as the glue dried –Works great. Use an old economy tuner and some wood to make the fixture.
Here it is doing its job. Since the sound hole is too small for my had I udrilled a super small hole in the crack and ran a wire through it out the sound hole. The cleat was strung on like a bead on a neckless and tied off. Tension was added by cranking hte tuner to compete the repair.
Let the whole thing set for a day and do it again for a total of 4 cleats.
The repair is strong and the tone of the little guy was as you would expect from a new ukulele.
Wooden binding is fairly fun to work. Gross dimensions are .060" and .030" made of Walnut and Maple. This matches the bound fingerboard. The detail on the right shows the light dark combo of the stripes. Very pleasing. Since the US Post Office has learned nitrocellulose binding is flamable suppliers started providing ABS plastic binding. It looks fine but is not as easy to work as the old nitro. Wood binding is now more popular. Wood over platic is nice.
