2015 had a very special Pi day. In a normal year, Pi day is March 14, or 3.14; pi accurate to two digits after the decimal point. This year, it was 3.1415 (March 14, 2015), good for four digits after the decimal.

However, if you append the time 9:27 you’ve got 7 digits, and if you are willing to venture into the sub-second realm you can have pi to as many digits as you like–though you’ll have to celebrate fast.

It seemed obvious that this special event called not only for a distinctive instrument, but for a special instrument label as well, which of course required research, which involved making and eating pie–excellent!

Berry pies gave good contrast, that decision was easy, but it wasn’t easy getting the right size of pi symbol along with a nice ripple to the edge, attractive browning, and not too much overflow of filling.

This next pie yielded the photo for the label, but just a couple minutes later the pi symbols were overflowing and the pie was good only for…eating. How sad.

Graphic designer Julie Weiss and I blended the photo with a trigonometry “unit circle” and my logo to create the label. It took many iterations to balance the photo, unit circle, and logo just right, and a few trips to the printer to get it onto a suitable paper.

Finally we had the right label. After signing and dating it, applying glue, gingerly slipping it through the soundhole and pressing it into place, I leaned back to admire the work only to notice a little problem–the wrong year. Sinking feeling, possibly some choice commentary. If only I’d had the label back on Pi day just before I closed up the body, when labels are commonly (though not always) installed. At least I’ve got the labels for future years.

Fortunately I used a reversible glue to install the label, and with a little persuasion it came back out:

The final result, in Richard Parker, the 2015 Pi day special edition ukulele:

Mmmmm….Pi.

Hmm…last post early November…already blamed the dog for a previous hiatus–there really isn’t anyplace to hide for the lack of posts. So what’s been happening?

My furniture making past re-appeared after I completed the oakulele last fall, in the form of a very large dining table that had been in the wings for a few years as the wood dried. The adventure started here, with local sawyer Doug Pollock walking the plank–a beautiful Oregon ash that fell across a creek in the next valley west of us.

With a blend of calculation, artful rigging, and brute force he managed to get the log onto dry ground and cut it into pieces that could make the trip to his mill.

Bill Storch (who built the table with me) and I oversaw the milling, mulling over how each plank might be used in the table, guessing what would appear with the next cut, and what might happen during drying and subsequent operations. The best slabs were cut 3″ thick for the top, a few were over 4″ thick for leg parts, the center rail and smaller leg parts were 2 1/2″, and wherever possible we cut spares just in case. As each cut was made we flipped the plank over to read the underside, then stacked it to the side. They were reeeaaaalllly heavy.

Skipping over a couple years of drying, Bill and I got down to work as fall waned. Here is the final selection for the top, and you can see that even with our best guessing two years earlier, we ended up choosing a slightly thinner plank for one of the top boards. We flipped and move these porkers many times searching for the best composition, and they were still darned heavy even though they were now dry.

There was quite a bit of carving on the base. As with instrument necks, I did this at night with a single desk lamp illuminating the work; the raking light makes even small variations in the shape jump out.

Bill made hammer-textured steel straps for the stretcher, and we hired a couple of very strong movers to bring the top safely into the owner’s house. Everyone agreed that this table will hold up the pizza.

Whew! What a relief that instruments are nice and light. Still, it’s fun to design and build a piece that operates at an architectural scale, where the sweat is about shear exertion rather than whether my next move will blow up a 2 millimeter thick piece of precious and irreplaceable wood!

There’s a whole lot of this tree left–anyone looking for a uke in Oregon ash?

Kidding, really…