What is Kawika doing in the  building process as we speak?

        Here is the overall building process in rough outline.  There are actually 600-800 small steps involved in the building process depending on individual customer requirements.  The table below gives you some sense of the general progress for a given batch of instruments that I'm working on at the moment.

        Light blue means that work in that area is completed;  yellow means that I am working on that particular section at the moment;  light green means that the work is still to be done.  Where possible, I have included hyperlinks (below each group of building actions) to appropriate pages on this and other websites.

      I'm currently not taking orders at this time. 

• Choose front, back and sides for color, figure
• Cut and sand, front, back and sides;  Measure properties
• Join the fronts and backs;    Brace the front and backs;    Soundhole trim; 
• Bend sides;    Join sides;    put linings on       
•  Join the front to the sides
• Compliance map for top;    Tune;  Match back to top;   Ukulele Bridge Doctor

• Join the back to the sides;      install bindings
• Choose, cut, join the neck
• Rough shape, sand, slot neck; install truss rod
• Choose and thickness and slot fingerboard
• Dot, shape, and fret fingerboard
• Shape neck more, tape fingerboard for gluing

• Join neck and fingerboard to body
• "Final" sanding
• French polish sealing of pores
• French polish, 8 coats
• Level sand, 4-6 more coats
• Make bridges,     string trees

• Allow shellac to harden; buff; wax
• Gluing the bridge  ;   (About glue strength and clamping)   ;   (About the proper place to put the bridge)
• Level, round, buff frets
• Saddle, string tree, tuners, nail guards
• String and test; final adjustments
• Notify purchaser...
  

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