Got the neck block shaped today. This was interesting to make as it has different shapes at top and bottom – both need to meet the sides in a complex curve.
I marked out the shapes on top and bottom, then connected the ends of the lines.
I’ve made a mold for the body from scrap plywood. It is slightly more complex than usual because the body sides are twisted near the neck – the top and bottom are different shapes. Hopefully the sides will blend into the neck.
I’ve made another front or back – will decide where to use the panels later. This one is a bit thinner – about 2mm – so maybe it would be a good front with the thicker panel for the back where the instrument is damped by the player’s body.
Thanks to Khai Nguyen on YouTube for the suggestion of using hair curling tongs for bending the sides.
I cut two more strips on the bandsaw and thinned them down. They were slightly too narrow to use for the bottom of the uke so I used them for the sides. Thinning the sides takes a while but gets there in the end. I’m aiming for 2mm thick.
Continue readingOk – there are lots of things I’m supposed to be doing but here’s another project just for fun. I’ve long wanted a Sopranino Ukulele but I can’t really afford one, plus it would be fun to have a go at making one.
A Sopranino is smaller than a Soprano Ukulele – the Soprano has a scale length of around 13″/330mm and the Sopranino has a scale length of around 12″/305mm. One big advantage of this size is that I can resaw the timber on my mini-bandsaw which has a capacity of around 75mm.
This is the concept I came up with:
Well – if not finished at least it is working. I’ve got the sound post in (somewhat unconventional – see below) and strung it up and it sounds lovely!
Starting to feel like it might be finished one day!
The neck is more-or-less finished. I’ve fitted the tuners (drilled out to take the larger strings) so that I could see what it all sounded like. The answer is that it sounds lovely 🙂
Continue readingJust because I don’t have enough projects on the go 😉 I’ve started making a bass ukulele. I call it a μ-bass.
The body is an old Port Wine box. Since this wasn’t glued I’ve run Titebond around all the joints so they don’t buzz. The neck is a old piece of mahogany that has been lying around for 20 years. I bought some bass guitar tuners on eBay – I’ll need to make the slots bigger. Soundboard will be birch plywood.
See this summary of the build.
I bought a cheap Makala pineapple ukulele secondhand on eBay – I couldn’t justify anything expensive. Overall I’m very happy with it – the tone is fine & it holds its tune. However the intonation (tuning) of the fretted notes was poorer than I’d like particularly on the C (lowest and thickest) string.
There are a number of reasons why this can happen:
Adjustable compensated saddles are a standard feature of electric guitars and basses providing screw adjustment of the length of the string. However for some reason they are not standard on acoustic instruments – maybe just because of the weight. Expensive ukuleles have fixed compensated saddles but cheaper ones (and mine is very cheap) don’t.
I checked the action (distance from string to fret) at the first fret and the 12th fret and these appeared to be ok – well within the figures given on the websites I found.
So what I needed to do was move the saddle away from the fretboard for the thickest (C) string. This involved cutting back the saddle until the intonation was correct at the 12th fret. Even on a cheap instrument this is a bit daunting.
To make the process reversible I bought a new saddle. I rubbed it on fine sandpaper until it was the right size to fit into the slot. The old saddle could be slid out once the strings were slackened.
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