Small steps ahead

It seems ages ago that I wrote the previous post.

After the bending experiments I ended up with enough ribs to start building.

This first instrument will be a sample to put my skills to test and to test the building process before building the 'real' one.
With the serious possibility of ending up with two functional instruments I make this first one somewhat larger to be tuned in E. (string length will become aprox. 63 cm)

Not all the ribs are flawless but good enough to try the tricky part of glueing them together.....

After drying the ribs have got an even smaller radius and streigthened a little bit.

I 've bent the sides and prepared the neck from a piece of Sycamore.

While glueing the parts together I discovered how easyly the ash cracks alongside the grain!

Forming the heel of the neck to be able to fit the center rib was quite a job. (It would be great to have a fitting plane for every job....)

To ease the job somewhat I decided to use simple PVA glue to fit the ribs. I hope the resulting seams are strong enough. 

Used lots of clamps to squeeze the ribs together