I've had the ukulele finished for almost 4 months, and I cannot believe I never put the final images up. Here's an image. It's been strung up and showed off already.

Routing out the channel for the binding. This was a particularly scary step, as it could potentially destroy the soundbox. You can see the lighter color wood. That's the liner pieces that provide more gluing area for the sides and toneboard.

I'm cleaning out the routs with a chisel. A smaller chisel would have worked better, but this is the only one I have.

A little test fitting of the binding to see where the high and low spots are in the channel.

Fixing some of the high spots.

Here are some of the "accessories" I bought to add to the ukulele kit. The mother of pearl will make a nice inlay, the pearl dots will be fingerboard side dots, and the black binding will be ... [drumroll] binding. Little did I know how much work all of these would add to the final project.

Getting ready to glue on the binding. I used Duco Cement and lots of masking tape. I also cut off the inside corner of the binding so it wouldn't get caught on any wood that was left in the binding channel, a precaution that I read about online.

Here it is drying.

Seriously, this was super messy. Look at that dried duco cement. Oh well, a little sander and it'll be gone lickity split.

This inside bend didn't stick very well, so I reglued it and retaped it. Another overnight wait.

All the fretting is done. I had to hand file the frets with a small triangular file. For Christmas, I was given a bunch of mill files. Future fingerboards will be much simpler.

Here I am sanding the edges.

Can you sense the potential for disaster here?

Taking things nice and slow.

After much frustration, wood filling with CA glue and sawdust, and filing, the side dots are flat. I didn't realize they'd be so big. Next time, I'm buying 1/16" dot material. In the middle of this process, it looked really ugly. Now it looks alright.

Gluing the fingerboard to the neck. Another somewhat scary event. Get the fingerboard tilted any, and kiss the nice intonation goodbye.

Scraping the binding, scraping the bindin. I made a homemade cabinet scraper out of an old saw blade. I cut the blade into a 3x1 piece, flattened and burnished one of the edges. Worked VERY well, and it held an edge for a long time.

Skip ahead to the inlay process. This took one of my entire days at home. This had to be the most frustrating part, detail wise. Much vulgarity was to be had during this process.

Here's the inlay looking all purty. This is after final sanding. You'll also note that I gave the peghead it's final shape. Normally, you'd do this before doing the inlay, but I made a mistake, and sanded off some of the veneer. Thus, my peghead no longer looks like a Martin Soprano Uke, but looks like my own creation.

Here you can see the hole I drilled for the bolt on neck. The plans didn't call for a bolt on neck, but I wanted to try it. Remember, I'm working up towards a full-sized guitar. I need to figure out some of these techniques before I mess them up on something larger and harder to fix (i.e. hide mistakes).

The bolt is just a 1/4-20 furniture bolt. The insert is a 1/4-20 screw-in insert. I had read on Cumpiano's site that those inserts will rip out the end grain of the neck. I figured that the ukulele doesn't put enough tension on the neck to worry about it. In the end, I was right.

Getting ready to mark on the neck where I will drill the hole for the insert. This little metal piece is used for marking holes when building items with dowels.

Here you can see it in the hole, and just about to press again the neck.

And this is the cute little mark it leaves.

Oh my gosh!!! What have I done?!?

I've drilled out the hole for the insert. Duh.

Skip ahead a few (forgot to take pictures). Here I am measuring out the bridge. This is particularly scary part, because if the bridge is off, the intonation is bad FOREVER.

Take a deep breath, spread some titebond, and screw away.

Labels: Ukulele

The third part of the ukulele build. I've been having computer problems, which is why this is delayed.

Here's a sliver I have left over from carving the body type. I thought this would be a fun way to make the top and bottom match the sides.

And this is what happens when you add more power! I bought myself an early Christmas present, a laminate trimmer.

Here I am going the quick way again. I'll still need to scrape the sides with a cabinet scraper, but that's not big deal.

I wanted to see what it'd look like once it was finished, so I'm pouring a little denatured alcohol onto the body. Alcohol has the benefit of showing you the pretty grain, and it dries quickly too.

Holding up the body for the camera. Fun, fun.

I'm seating the frets here. Frets ended up being one of the more frustrating aspects of building this. Hammering is definitely the way to go. I tried pressing them in slowly, but they'd move around and not seat correctly. It may be possible to use the drill press if I had a special caul to push them in securely, but without the caul, it's darn near impossible to get a straight push.

Head on over to part four

Labels: Ukulele

Act two of the ukulele build. Things are still going alright.

Here I am sizing up the bracing to fit the back.

Showing a little bit of glue on the bracing. I smeared the glue around evenly with my fingers before clamping.

More of the super duper clothespins at work. Notice that the board is curving with the radius of the braces.

While waiting for the soundboard glue to dry, I began carving the body to fit the taper. This was a time consuming task, because I wanted to make sure there was no chipping.

After a break, I purchased the pieces for spool clamps. At $3 each from Stewmac, I figured I could make them on my own for cheaper. The final price for each clamp ended up being around $0.75. That's not a bad price, cheaper than a soda per clamp. Here you can see the cork circles that I put onto the inside faces of the clamps.

Here are my homemade spool clamps. You can see that they're just 1" pieces of 1 1/4" oak doweling, with a 6" 1/4-20 carriage bolt, a washer and a wing nut.

I forgot to take pictures of the process, but I glued the top piece onto the sides. It went relatively well. Some of the pieces didn't get a good helping of glue, so I had to force some into the joint with a toothpick and let it dry again.

Here you can see the braces for the top. I'm sizing them up and getting ready to cut them.

A couple of pencil marks lets me know where to cut the braces.

Here the cutting takes place. I'm using a utility knife with a relatively new blade. It's the same knife I've been using for most of the building process.

I'm placing the braces carefully into the body. At this point, I'm just testing the fit.

Here you can see the gluing and clamping taking place. The piece of railroad track is holding down the finger braces. The orange quick clamps are pushing on a caul which is pushing on the bridge brace.

I glued on the label before I glued the back to the body.

On to part three!

Labels: Ukulele

The ukulele kit has arrived!

I ordered one of the Stewmac ukulele kits from Woodcraft (because of the free shipping), and it arrived this week. I've started putting it together, and intend to share that process here. I should give you some of the background.

My last year in seminary, I started to learn how to play guitar. Pretty quickly, I realized that I wanted a nicer guitar, and wanted to build one. In the meantime though, I was given a nice guitar. There goes my motivation.

I recently discovered that I still like building instruments. Alison says I am nuts. I decided to build a ukulele. So, now I'm Hawaiian nuts, like a macadamia.

After much research, I decided to build a ukulele kit from Stewmac, because it seemed reasonable for someone with a little bit of woodworking experience.

Now for the fun stuff.

This is the mold that will hold the ukulele form. It's 3/4" pine plywood. The bottom piece if 7"x11" and the sides are 2" and 2 1/2", and they're screwed on from the bottom.

It's the box! I could hardly contain my thrill.

Opening the box. Things are neatly packed.

I pulled out all the components to make sure they were there. Neat. Everything looked like it was in good condition.

Here's the improved mold. I added legs underneath and the angle braces on the sides. As you'll see in the next photo, the braces hold the sides in the correct shape.

First time putting the bent sides into the mold. Starting to look like a ukulele already!

Here's the tail block dry clamped to the bent sides. The small piece of wood is so that the clamps don't mar the surface of the tail block.

Here's the neck and tail block dry clamped. I'm not sure if I stuck the tail block upside down or not. It's difficult to tell.

Here's the neck and tail block glued in. You can see the wood I wedged to push the sides again the blocks.

Here you can see the completed rosette. You can see how I decided to finish up the rosette instead of a simple ending. First, I cut the individual pieces so that they were all square with each other. Then I pushed the rosette into the pre-cut rosette slot. At the end, I held it all together, and scored each individual piece. Then, I cut each one individually. The fit ended up being perfect.

Here I am cutting the rosette piece. To cut the piece neatly, I first glued the pieces together, and then cut them. The instructions tell you to just put the rosette in a circle, but the ends didn't look very clean to me. Therefore, I decided to put a small piece on the end turned perpendicular. You can see it in the above photograph.

Here's the lining strips. I had to hold them up, measure and cut them. The goal is to fit them closely to the neck and tail blocks.

I cut the linings with a utility knife. I made sure to put a piece of wood underneath the knife so that I didn't cut my table.

Here are the parts for the super duper lining clamps, just clothespins and rubber bands.

Here they are put together, lined up and ready to use.

Here are the super clamps in process holding the binding strips. Everything is glued up. This is the first time I've tried to glue something without squeeze out. It's quite the challenge if you've never worked that way before.

Here is part two

Labels: Ukulele

Labels: Ingathering

Labels: Ingathering

Labels: Ingathering

Labels: Ingathering

Labels: Ingathering

Labels: Ingathering

Labels: Ingathering

Labels: Ingathering

Here's a map of how to get to Devil's Bathtub in Spearfish Canyon near Spearfish, South Dakota. I had difficulty finding this, so hopefully this is indexed by Google.