Archtop Pineapple Ukulele Part 9 – End is in (distant) sight!

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Made a bridge. This is based on the shape violin bridges – not sure about it yet but we’ll see.

Bridge blank, with paper template glued on
Rounding the bottom to suit the curvature of the top of the uke
Very rough but basic shape done
Making a new tailpiece. This one is only slightly narrower than the end of the fretboard so should look correct.
Everything in place to see what it looks like. The tailpiece is attached with violin tailgut from EBay.
Raising the grain
Drilling the string holes. I tried to drill them the right size for the strings, but this drill chuck isn’t accurate and the tiny drills wander a lot in the endgrain
So in the end I drilled them all 1mm
I’ve made the holes for the side fret markers. The inlay hasn’t arrived yet.
Since the fretboard covers part of the top I’ve had to do a basic finish on the instrument before attaching the fretboard. I’ve used two pins to align the fretboard.
Gluing
I’ve tried oiling the tailpiece and endpin to see what they look like

Overall I think it looks lovely! I know I’m not supposed to say that, but I’m very happy with the way it has turned out. Hopefully it will sound nice too – the acoustics are guesswork…

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