It is finished...

Well, my hardanger conversion is finished. I imagine there will be continued adjustments, but the instrument has strings, and it plays (possible video later). The fingerboard is in place (glued with liquid hide glue fron titebond since I didn't want to deal with boiling anything) and the sympathetic strings resonate. In short, it works.

The pegbox is full, and it was a bit of a tight fit to wind each string where it needed to go:

I ended up having to alter my plans and use the friction pegs to tune the sympathetic strings and the geared tuners to hold the primary playing strings - the tension was simply too high on the main strings to be held in place by the friction ukulele pegs. But it doesn't take much to hold the light-guage sympathetics in tune. So I have double fine-tuning capabilities on the main strings (with fine tuners at the bridge) and much less control over the sympathetics, but at least the pegs are all holding now.

Utilizing a simple solution (seen many other places) I simply drilled holes in the tailpiece, and ran the ball ends of my sympathetic strings through:

It's hard to tell in this photograph, but you can just barely see the 4 small-diameter holes I drilled for the sympathetics in the bridge as well.

I'm sure it will continue to require adjustment, but for now, I'm simply glad it's all together, and functions as an instrument.