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Rosette

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I have a box of pieces of shell I go to when I want to make a rosette or do some inlay on a headstock. I’m new to inlay but it can be really beautiful and I’m looking forward to getting better at it. One of my instruments had an inlay on the headstock and I think this tenor probably will have one as well. There is also a little piece of silver in there which came from my mum's jewelry-making days. I'm not sure how I'll use that. The saw in the foreground is a jeweller's saw used to cut the shell into the desired shapes. It takes quite a bit of practice to develop accuracy. I'm working on it. Constructing the rosette on a piece of card.  Not your Tim Horton's doughnut. This little piece of wood is very fragile. It goes around the sound hole on the inside of the top of the ukulele. The grain goes at 90 degrees to the grain of the top and it helps to strengthen the area around the sound hole where the rosette will be on the other side. When I was shaping the doughn...
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Why this title?

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My name is Marian. I've been studying lutherie for 4 years now and decided it was time to put down some of what I'm learning in an organized way. Since I already write a blog why not start a second one dedicated to building ukuleles? So here I am, still a novice but making different mistakes and learning and understanding more each time I build an instrument. I've just started on my fourth instrument, a tenor ukulele. I've built two concerts and one soprano to this point. Next question, what do I call the new blog. I thought about it for quite some time and then decided on Nuts, Frets, and Fingerboards. Why that? Well, each of those words denotes a part of a ukulele. Sometimes I think I'm nuts for having started down this road. Sometimes I say, 'Nuts' (and a few other choice words) when things go sideways. I do quite a lot of fretting when I'm trying to get the details right. And the fingerboards are just fingerboards. I study with master luthier Jake P...
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