First thing was to glue the head veneer to the head. This is a solid piece of Black Walnut about 1/8" thick. Once the glue dried, I attached the head template using double stick tape and cut around the template with a coping saw.
Next I cut the bulk of the taper at the heel using a carcase saw. Then it was time to gather all manner of shaping tools: Mallet, chisels, rasps, spokeshaves, gouges, floats and hand plane. First thing to do was shape the head down to the template edge using a rasp, drill the pilot holes for the tuning pegs, then remove the template and plane the veneer down to finished thickness using a smoothing plane. The extra notch at the end of the head is to facilitate centering on the assembly fixture and will be removed later. Starting with a hand saw and chisel, I chopped out the bulk of the contour slots then finished it up with a small rasp. I frequently checked the slots with a contour gauge that was cut out with the laser. The contour gauge has two profile sizes for fret position 1 and 9. one is for the finished dimension and the other is .06" larger which I used as starting profile for the preliminary shaping. The final shaping won't be done until after final assembly and the fretboard is installed.
The next step was to start carving away the tapers at the heel and head. This was necessary to provide clearance for the spokeshaves used to finish the neck. Finally, using all the shaping tools in the arsenal, I was able to whittle away everything that did not look like a ukulele neck.
