The sound board is 1/8"cedar and has a nice aroma when cutting and sanding. The outline of the ukulele was traced onto to the cedar sound board. I also traced the hole and rosette design. The rosette design consists of a contrasting hardwood and combinations of black and white purfling. I used a Dremel with a circle cutter and a Stew Mac router bit. I practiced using the Dremel prior to cutting the soundboard. After a few nervous runs, I got the nerve to cut the hardwood circle and and cut the channels for the circle and purfling. The tolerances are very close, the depth of the cut is 1/32".
Once the channels and hardwood rosette were cut, the hardwood rosette and purfling was dry fitted and super glued. I made the mistake of using LMI's wood glue to attach the hardwood rosette which caused some expansion due to moisture. The purfling was difficult to attach because of the expansion. I had to re-rout the outer purfling and replaced it properly. Next time I will use super glue for the whole rosette.
After the glue set, I placed masking tape around the rosette area to protect the soundboard. Note cedar and spruce are very soft and need to be protected so you don't end up with dents and scratches. Then I took a sander to level rosette and towards the end hand sanded to the sound board level.
The sound board thickness of 3/32" was achieved by passing the back of the sound board through my thickness sander.
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