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I might get one or the other as a present - but which? Pax are 20 tpi, Lie Nielsen 15. Otherwise the specs are very close. And any views on rip or crosscut (I'm tending to rip if only for ease of sharpening). I think I'd like views from those who've used them, and suggestions for any others...

To help line up the boards I'd make a simple L shaped piece, about 6x2 ins for the long leg, 2x2 for the short. Place the tail board in the vice and F clamp this to it so that one side is snug in the corner, and you have some protruding above the board. That would let you slide the pin board...

Indeed a useful gadget! I probably ought to make one, but I only resaw a dozen or so ukulele sets a year so I haven't bothered yet. My friend Sven in Stockholm has bothered though, and Michelle might find his blog posts about resawing useful (especially the pictures showing how he clamps the...

I've cut the majority of the wood for my ukes by hand - it's a slow business but works surprisingly well if (a) you take it slowly, and (b) you have a decent enough saw (more on that later). However, the financial saving is not that great unless you enjoy the exercise and so don't make a...

That seems far too thick a coat for the timescale. I brush on a maximum of two coats a day, 4-6 hours apart. Even then, if it's humid I might not add any more coats the following day. I've caused myself problems in the past applying shellac in thick coats - as I added more I reached a tipping...

I've used pre-mixed French polish from the local ironmongers with no problems, and it seems to last about a year after opening before I start to suspect it might not be at its best. Various colours available including clear (usually a few pounds more expensive). A wash coat for me is simply a...

I've pore filled a ukulele with epoxy and then put shellac on top - seems fine several years later, and the body gets some wear, so no adhesion issues. But I think wear on benches would be hard on shellac. How about two wash coats of shellac over the epoxy and then poly varnish over the shellac?

Don't confuse "warm" with low humidity. Today it was around 20C here and at least 80% humidity. I've found that thin plates tend not to distort permanently, but return to their former shape once humidity is back to their "natural" level. If we ever get a run of dry days you might find they're...

For ukuleles, 1.8 mm or thinner! My experience of the boards from model making shops is that they are pretty stable. BUT, humidity changes will make any piece of wood that thin move quite a lot. I think David's first step should be to bring the wood indoors to see if it flattens. I suspect it...

Looks like I might be a good guesser. Here's an Air Ministry mark on a clock.

A (crown) M might well stand for Air Ministry. But that's only a guess. It might explain how you've found so many SIF drills locally, as I guess their natural military habitat would be WWII airfields.

Cash flow. A high proportion of small businesses which are theoretically viable fail because they run out of cash and can't pay suppliers (or the mortgage). This means invoicing soon after the end of the job and chasing up late payers. For large jobs, stage payments. The other thing to...

I think you'll need to experiment - how curl takes finish is hard to predict. On curly koa I got a great depth to the curl using shellac, but that wouldn't be tough enough for a kitchen. Maybe try a couple of coats of clear shellac with satin varnish on top? My guess is there will be a...

A quick bit of online research tells me that in WWI the "M" might have referred to the Marylebone supply depot (no idea about the Y): http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forum ... pic=189331 Subsequently letters referred to dates (for some reason working backwards through the alphabet) so that M...

I'd do that, but I'd also test the final coat of finish. You don't want it to dissolve all those signatures! If pen and finish are compatible, make sure all the signatories use that kind of pen.

Not my aesthetic either, but it is a very even staining job which is what the OP was asking about. I prefer to select wood which looks good under clear finish and to keep the finish very thin.

The guitar is a fairly high-end Gibson, so I'd expect the finish to be thin (less than 0.1 mm). But I haven't seen the instrument in question, though I have seen equivalently good French Polish finishes which would be substantially thinner. That definitely needs appropriately selected wood. For...

This is towards the top end of what can be achieved on spruce: (Not my own work I hasten to add) Searching for how to produce a sunburst guitar top will find you a range of techniques, some using alcohol based and some waterborne dyes. What they all have in common is washcoating the spruce...

I'd begin by wiping on some naptha or white spirit to see how that looks. If ok, a few coats of clear shellac, just wiped on, would be my choice. The original finish is likely to be nitrocellulose lacquer, and if so then in theory a thin coat of the same might burn in almost invisibly (this is...

I'd apply a wash coat of shellac before applying the CA.