Bracing the Plates
For our uke project, since many of you don't have radius dishes, we are going to put a slight radius in the top and back using shims. It is important to have some radius in the plates so that they don't end up concave in shape, which can easily happen if we try to make them just flat. Nothing very scientific about this method, but it works.
To sand a radius on the braces, run them on a piece of sandpaper applying the most pressure to the ends. By switching them from end to end, you can create a radius. If you hold the brace on a flat surface and rock it, you should feel like the bottom has an even curve. If there are sharp ledges, you'll feel that the brace does not rock smoothly. If you can get a 3/32" space under the brace ends, that will work fine. I'll show the next step ASAP. Keep tuned.
If you happen to have a radius dish with a 30 foot radius, you can use that for the brace gluing. If you do then you would have also shaped your braces to a 30 foot radius. If you don't have one, then shape your braces as previously described and shim the ends of the plates under your braces with some thick cardstock to give the plates a slight dome. This is not the best method, but it does work O.K. The braces shown being glued have not been shaped at all. In reality, most of us remove some of the wood from the braces before gluing to make carving a little easier.
Here the centerstrip is being glued on the back. I like to clamp a straight edge down to help keep the centerstrip from sliding while being put in place. I put a couple of leftover pieces from the plates under the ends of the straightedge to make clamping easier. Some builders like to glue their cross braces in first and then put pieces of centerstrip in later. That works, but it is very difficult to keep the centerstrip pieces aligned. In the 1 piece process, slots are cut out of the centerstrip and the braces are glued later. It's easy to do and helps keep the cross braces in place while you glue them.
