Preparation - Wood

This is a shorter chapter about what I did before starting to work with the neck and the body.

17th of October:
To start with I sawed the wooden planks into smaller pieces so that I can transport them to the woodwork room. If you want to see how they looked before I started to saw in them, take a look under the budget and then click on the wood.

Here are some pictures of what it looked like when they were divided into smaller pieces:

I still got 1,45m left of the thick oak board. Hopefully I will not be needing it, but if something goes wrong I have the chance to correct it.

18th of October:
I have taken a look on the headstock, and what design that I want on it, here are two pictures of what it will look like. I believe that it will fit very well with the design of the balalajka, since it looks a bit like an upside down triangle.

The last picture also shows you my tuning pegs, as you see the pegs themselves are not straight, but this is pretty common with other balalajkas that I have seen. One solution is of course to use a router and hide them instead, but at the same time that could affect the sound.

19th of October:
Today I have glued the planks of the body together. I have also gotten them and the neck planed. Here are some pictures, I also had the headstock cut out, to see if the size will be right.

The planks laid up in the desired order. (To get the patterns to somewhat matched but also to avoid damages in the wood to be placed in the center...) The boards are placed in different direction to reinforce the wood, and reduce the risk of cracks.

Some pictures after the first part of gluing

The pickguard, when the glue is drying.

The neck after it has been planed.

Here is the headstock that I were taking about.

The final result of the today's work.

To get all the oak planed I first glued two bits together. This of course after having planed the sides of the planks. So that the sides were smooth and could be glued to each other.

Then I gave the planks time to dry a bit, and finally the boards were planed and I glued the to big chunks together. I then left them at the woodwork to dry, I will pick them up tomorrow.

This is probably the last information added to this category, now I will move over to the separate neck and body section instead.

20th of October:
This is the absolutely last information here... These are two pictures after I had picked up the wood. Hopefully the balalajka will look a little bit better than this when I am finished with itt.

The first one is without the ebony fretboard.

This is a picture with the ebony fretboard added.