Tinkerer's Thoughts

Finally completed, woot. Whewww, I took over a year, but worth the time. Well, the actual time put working on the uke really was not that long. From my last post, I've been inundated with sickness, the holidays, more sicknesses, planning my baby's 1st bday, weddings, more birthdays and even more sicknesses.

Well, I let the Tru-Oil cure for more than just a few weeks mainly because I did not had time to work on the uke. I had five weddings to go to in October, so that pretty much ate up each weekend. Good times though. So here is the uke fresh from sitting around for about 6 weeks. I just put on enough oil that made me feel good. I'm going for a satin sheen and I did not completely pore fill. Might not be a super smooth finish but I'm happy with it.

My first attempt at cutting the body template was a bust. I used a forstner bit to remove material about half an inch to the body outline. Then I thought I could could use a sanding drum for a Dremel in a drill press to shape the template. The dremel drum could only remove very little material at a time, so I gave up on that idea. I do not have a bandsaw nor a scroll saw. I also do not have the funds right now to get one. I found an old coping saw in my wife's grandpa's tool shed. Unfortunately, its rusted beyond belief and the blade needs replacing. I used the saw anyway but cutting through 1/2" MDF with an old rusted and dull saw just was not happening. I will have to get a new saw. Luckily, there is a 1/4" MDF board laying around that I can use to make a template out of. Cutting through the 1/4" board should be much easier than the original 1/2" board. Then maybe I can use this template to cut out the 1/2" board with a router. With the body o...

Why build one? Why not? My quest to build my own solid body ukulele was inspired by How to Build a Stratocaster Style Guitar "The Hard Way" and the many awesome DIY quilted maple guitars. I eventually want to build a quilted maple top Les Paul and figured why not start with something cheap and small, hence a ukulele. My plan is to make an 18" tenor sized Les Paul solid body ukulele.  I actually started this project before building the Stewart MacDonald Tenor Ukulele Kit . I put the solid body project on hold to build the kit. I have come to a point where I can't do much on the kit since the finish needs to cure so why not pick up where I left off on the solid body. For wood, I didn't feel like forking over $$$ for wood blanks. I like the look of guitars that have the stringer look so I thought why not just glue up 1x2's of mahogany and douglas fir. I know this is not the best method or even the best wood but these woods were readily available from th...

This post is more of I'm still here since I haven't posted anything for the past month and a half. Finding the time to work on the ukulele has been hard with the kids getting sick, then me getting sick, then the wife getting sick, then the kids all over again. Also, my wife had a special request for a stepping stool for our daughter, so the ukulele had been put on hold. I sanded up 220. Then using a spray bottle, I sprayed the wood the ukulele with water to raise the grain. The wood swells up and wood fibers tend to stick up (wood whiskers). I then sanded the whiskers out with 320. I repeated the process three times. By the third time, very few whiskers would pop up. Here is the uke after all that sanding. Next I marked off where the bridge will go on painters tape. Then I cut the tape to size. When the tape was pulled, it pulled some of the wood with it resulting in more wood whiskers. A light sand with 320 fixed the problem. Taped off the fretboard before app...

Been a long time since I had the opportunity to work on the ukulele and post any progress. I have been busy with many family functions. Also, I'm at the point where most of the sanding is done and that takes up a lot of time. I know from my first posts about building the ukulele I wrote that I will follow the instructions and not skip around. I felt that I needed to skip around a bit and follow my own instinct from here on out. What I did was mixture of advice from reading ukulele building sources and my own experience from refretting guitars. So the following is not exactly following the instructions. The first thing I needed to do was flatten the top of the neck. The neck had many scalloped indents as if they rushed it through the milling process. The scallops are barely visible in the picture below because I had started to sand it and then decided to take a picture of the scallops. The instructions give directions to work on the fretboard by fretting and leveling t...

The back of the ukulele was fairly easy to complete. Trimming the back braces were like trimming the soundboard. Like the soundboard, I did not cut the braces to width till I could mark the areas that intersects with the ukulele side. During the dry fit, I lightly marked the area that would be visible from the sound hole. This help me placed my label/signature on the back. I just used a permanent marker thanking my wife for the kit and signing my name. Since I had a chisel in hand from trimming the braces, I just used the chisel to trim the sides down to the lining. A hand plane would have been better as it would keep the trim nice and flat. My chisel trim wasn't perfectly flat but that didn't matter a whole lot since the back was sanded flat afterwards. There probably would be less sanding if a hand plane was used. After back edge was trimmed and sanded flat, my youngest inspected the inside. Then she inspected the outside. When I glued up the top to the s...

I finally finished up gluing the soundboard to the sides. I took so long mainly due to lack of equipment and supplies. My chisels were a bit dull and needed sharpening. I like to use the The D&S Scary Sharp(TM) System of sharpening but this time I was out of sandpaper. Took awhile before I found time to get the sandpaper I needed. After sharpening my chisel super sharp, shaping the braces were a breeze. The chisel cut through the braces like butter. I did not cut the braces to length at this time. Following the directions, I used a turnbuckle to clamp the side to the jig. I found that the back portion of the side did not sit flush to the jig. The cause was that the dowels holding in the waist line were not perfectly perpendicular to the jig base. I thought I could remedy this by wedging in card stock so that the ukulele side would sit perpendicular to the base. This turned out to be a problem later on (but could have been avoided). To sand the top flat, I used a sheet o...

Yay, I finally got around to writing up this post. I could have done the following while waiting for the glue to dry or waiting for the new side to come in. But, like I said, this is my first build so I'll just stick to the order given in the instruction manual. Here I transfered the lines from the template to the ukulele top. I wasn't paying attention and drew the lines for the lower back brace. Adding the sound hole purfling was pretty easy. The strips fit nice and snug in the channel. I used a bit of tape to hold it down while I cut each plastic strip to size. I cut each strip individually on a piece of thin card board to protect the sound board. My messy CA job. I just used "The Original Super Glue", well that is what it said on the little yellow tube. The back braces were easy, just clamp and glue. I used spring clamps as shown in the instruction manual. However, the clamps on each end of the brace didn't seem to be enough as the center of t...

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...