Tinkerer's Thoughts

I relieve mommy of baby doodie, I mean duty, when I come home from work so I haven't had much time to fit and glue the back linings. I have my baby on my lap on a Boppy pillow as I work on the uke (I even have her on my lap right now as write this posts). Here's a picture of work stoppage to plug the crying baby, I mean pacify baby with binky, just as I was about to cut the lining to size. I had to stop after the cuts because baby wanted my 100% attention. On the following night I was able to sand the edges of the lining to better fit the uke. Dry fitting went well till baby got fussy again. Luckily for me tonight, Mommy took the kids out. This gave me time to glue in the lining. I really should have done this outside but I had everything at my desk and was not sure how long Mommy would be out. Gluing was a tad bit messy. You try to be neat, but you still drip here and there. I did several dry runs, marked the linings left/right but I still managed to make a huge...

Before gluing the neck block, the instructions say to make a clamping caul for the neck block. The neck block has a little radius on it, I think its about 10". There are no instructions on how to make the clamping caul, but one can easily be made by using the neck block as a sanding block. I used 80-grit just to rough out the curve. I don't think the caul needs to be smooth, just curved enough to the shape of the neck block. Fitting the neck block proved to be a challenge even with a couple of dry run practices. The image in the instructions show just one clamp holding the neck block in place. I had a hard time trying to close the ends together and position the neck block. To help me I used another clamp to hold the sides in at the waist to bring the side ends together a bit. I also used a spare piece of wood between the clamp and the neck block to spread out the clamping pressure. After many practice runs, it was time for the glue up. The glue made the process almost a ...

My wife bought me a Tenor Ukulele Kit from Stewart Macdonald in February for my Christmas present (she gets my xmas presents late). She knows I like to tinker with guitars (I'm a luthier wannabe) and thought this would be a great gift. I received the kit in the mail sometime in March, I was excited at first to see the box waiting for me. Then upon inspection, the box looked a little beat up at the corners. I thought no biggie of it and eagerly opened the box. To my dismay, there was a big crack/split in the ukulele's side piece. Also, one of the 1/4" dowel pegs was missing. I'm guessing the dowel peg fell through a hole in the box. You can see that hole in the picture that has the cracked side piece. I contacted StewMac via email (with the above picture) that night about the damage from shipping. Customer service responded by the time I checked my email in the morning and said they would ship a replacement piece asap. I received the replacement within...

When my wife got her canoe, there were only a few instructions on the net for building stands. There were many pictures of PVC canoe stands but not much, if any, detailed instructions on making them. Here is my shot at a detailed tutorial (this was also on a site that is no more that I had awhile back). Table of Contents Summary Getting Ready Materials Tools Pipe Cutting Hole Drilling Assembly Finishing Touches Summary Project: Canoe stands x 2 Project Time: About 3 hours Material Cost: Around $45 Easy to make canoe stands made out of PVC pipes. These stands have rope padding in place of the standard foam padding I have seen. Personally, I think the rope looks better than foam. Disclaimer: I take no responsibility if your stand fails to do its job or if you get hurt making the stands. I am writing this because seems like every project has a disclaimer because someone somehow screws up. Getting Ready Materials The following items were purchased ...

I recently inherited some neodymium magnets from a former coworker that left for greener pastures. The magnets are super strong for their size and fun to play with. I plan to use some of them to make hand wound humbucking pickups, but that won't be for some time. In the meantime, I found some uses for the magnets besides just sticking to my desk's overhead compartments. I made the hanging compass, now I know where north is from my cubicle. Then I tried the levitating paperclip attached to string, that was cool.

Hello World Software programming habit whenever trying something new. My dear loving caring wife started her blog " Sunshine, Bees, and Ladybugs " and encouraged me to start one. So here I go.