9/29/13

Fingerboard Divots Filling on Martin Ukulele Complete!

As I suspected, I needed to make a couple more rounds of fills to the divots.  The divots were so deep they were hard to fill in one shot.

The eyedropper is pointing to one of the holes remaining to fill.  You can also see some lengthwise holes near the front edge of the board as well.

I should mention that this fingerboard is made of Brazilian rosewood.  Martin used it up until 1964 or so.  It's really pretty, but from what I read, it's not that much better than other rosewood, aside from the fact that it's not exported anymore and a cult has risen up around it.

Here's Round 2 of fills.  I did another round after this one as well to get the last few little spots.

The fills are Indian Rosewood legally obtained through LMII.  All of their wood is CITES legal.  So don't report me!  (Yes, that is a reference to the infamous Gibson raid).

I almost overlooked the hole I made to insert the steamer needle for the reset!

This was a little different, since it was virtually a bottomless hole into the dovetail.

I used some medium CA to fill the hole a bit, and then put the rosewood shavings in the hole and built it up.  When I first dropped shavings in with no glue, they just fell into the dovetail!

The finished fingerboard.  I did another light levelling pass with 320 grit paper after I had levelled all the individual fills.

Then I oiled it with Dunlop Deep Conditioner.  Looks great.  The Brazilian rosewood is really beautiful.  The fingerboard probably hasn't looked this good in decades.

You can see the fills close-up.  But it looks much better than before with the awful divots.  The fills are darker than the board, and I think next time I do a fill like this I'm going to try very thin hide glue.  Hide glue dries clear, so I think fills may not be quite as dark as these are.



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