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How about a steel pin running top to bottom through the side? Push the pin up from underneath to raise one edge of the top enough to lift it off. I'm thinking a long M3 bolt, the head sitting in a recess in the top surface of the side. A nut on the bottom, in a recess large enough to allow you...

The walls of your box are quite thick, so you could glue a shallow lip all around, about half the thickness of the walls. Trim each side of the top (incidentally removing the screw holes) and drop it in to the well thus created. Of course, to get the lid off you now have to turn the box upside...

On musical instruments it's quite common to steam out single dents after finishing, because the player dinged the thing and wants it fixed. Damp cloth and soldering iron, so you're only heating the dent and not it's surrounds. With most finishes there us blooming, so then it's careful scraping...

I'm sure you could finish your board as well as I finished my koa uke, because I'm really not that good at finishing. The method I use is: a. Sand to P400, wipe on a coat of clear shellac, and then sand away all the marks I missed first time. Repeat as necessary (I'm bad at sanding too!). Wipe...

That's an amazing board! With a foot long offcut from it I could make a stunning ukulele (hint - make something small and sell the end to me!). A friend is a pretty successful luthier, and his first ukes were all made from meranti (window frame offcuts I think). They sound really good, though...

Acrylic sheet? This comes in 4mm and 6mm thickness and is pretty cheap (loads of suppliers on eBay). I'd guess the thickness is pretty accurate, though I've never measured any.

If you think it's stopped moving you could just plane the back flat and then attach flat battens. Rather easier than matching curves ...

I have (or had) seven in total - all small thank goodness, and only two short-lived episodes of the excruciating pain. But it's now a constant dull ache which is very debilitating. The hope is that they will pass naturally, and I have a scan in 10 days or so to see whether there are fewer now...

What you seem to have there is the board which makes up the back shrinking across its width. Because of the way it was cut, the back has shrunk more than the inside, so it has cupped towards the wall. This is just what wood does as the humidity changes - if you put the clock in a damper...

If polyurethane, certainly not brittle like glass. Will it dent with a thumbnail? I suspect that new polyurethane is what to apply, others will know better than me how to minimise witness lines.

I make acoustic instruments and finish using shellac, so this is all from reading. 1. Cured polyester is inert, so fresh finish (of any kind) won't melt into it. Chemical strippers wont remove it. If you glue it down you'll get a refractive boundary (like ice on a pool) which means light...

I'm a long way from any class of instrument finisher, but if the guitar is not valuable ... Try a drop of CA glue on the raw wood where the nut was. The headstock wood has changed coliur with light exposure, so if the result is close but a bit paler then maybe all it needs is the flaking...

Are you sure it's polyurethane? Many guitar finishes are catalysed polyester (very brittle if it flakes). The standard repair for polyester is CA glue drop fill (search online for tutorials). Not sure how you'd tiny it though.

Even on hardwoods I usually find that one direction planes easier than the other. If you look at the grain on the side of the workpiece you'll probably see that it slopes a bit. You want to plane so you are snipping the ends off each grain line, rather than trying to slide the blade between the...

Wood is a great material for aircraft - stiff and light if you choose the right species. But you do need the aircraft to be mainly full of air, including the wings. Sadly, because wood moves over time the airfoil section distorts, so you can't produce high efficiency wings - the gliders I fly...

I'm guessing you mean model aircraft :D I've flown wooden aircraft as the pilot, and a turned fuselage would definitely stop me climbing aboard (not strong enough for flight forces), even if it could be made light enough to actually fly!

A friend made a ukulele from Afrormosia and said it was rather a pain to work with - splitty and crumbly. But the final result sounded and looked good.

Do check that you actually have wood under the paint. The carving could be cast plaster, with wood as the backing only. Find a rarely seen spot and scrape the paint away to check what's underneath.

This is pretty much the definitive guide to this kind of repair (click the pictures to see full size): http://www.frets.com/FretsPages/Luthier ... ehole.html I'd try on scrap to see how you get on. I'd reckon on 30 mins work to patch one, maybe two, holes, but you might be less cack-handed!

The only method I know to make this near-invisible is the method used by luthiers, a long-grain patch taken from matching wood with a gouge and glued to a matching gouge at the blemish. This is hard to do well, and very time-consuming. Have you considered highlighting the nail holes with a...