re: Pineapple Concert Ukulele

Had to stop and take a breath before I raced into the next step. I was all ready to glue-up the soundboard when I realized that gluing the bridge to the soundboard will be a more complicated process than if the ukulele had a conventional round soundhole. Normally, a few light duty deep-reach clamps will do the trick but in this case the soundholes are too far away and too small for a normal clamp. The bridge should be installed as one of the last steps in the process to simplify the finishing and to ensure it is properly positioned. That constraint means I can't install the bridge to the soundboard before installing the soundboard to the body. After considering a few options, I decided to make a pair of custom clamps.

They had to be deep enough to reach the bridge, narrow enough to fit into the soundhole, curved, in order to clear the braces and facilitate the insertion into the sound box.

This is what I came up with:

The center piece that is inside the soundbox is 1/4" Birch Plywood. The two outer arms are 1/8" Birch Plywood with glue blocks to hold them together. There is a 1/4" dowel near the pivot point that helps stabilize the whole thing while in use. 5 or 6 rubber bands provide enough pressure to clamp the bridge in place for gluing. 

This all seems like a lot of effort to accommodate one step in the build, but this is kind of a typical situation in lutherie.  I find myself having to make a lot of custom tools to meet assembly requirements. I may never use these clamps again unless I build another copy of this instrument or another that has similar geometrical constraints. But if that situation does come up, I'll be ready.

So...Time for the soundboard glue-up.