how averse would TB be if I...

[TomA1234]

redwood (is that a hardwood or a softwood?)

If the wood comes from a deciduous tree it is a hardwood (yes balsa is a hardwood). If the wood is from an evergreen it is a softwood. From a quick look on wikipedia I can see it could possibly be either (a few woods are referred to as redwood) but is most likely to be a softwood.

 

[pie_man_25]

If the wood comes from a deciduous tree it is a hardwood (yes balsa is a hardwood). If the wood is from an evergreen it is a softwood. From a quick look on wikipedia I can see it could possibly be either (a few woods are referred to as redwood) but is most likely to be a softwood.

Thanks man, I already knew the deciduous v. coniferous part, but was confused about which one redwood fell under (no pun intended). I'll refer to it as a softwood then.



all right, on to the actual building part. I build my CB ukes as a set-neck - the neck is going to be glued to the body, without any screws, and probably without a dovetail or mortise and tenon joint; the glue is rated for about 2 tonnes, and the tension of the strings is about 23 pounds, you do the math.

My process builds the neck and body separately, so the order I'm going to follow will loosely follow this order, though will likely overlap:

1) preparation of the box - removal of paper, rough plans, etc...
2) making the soundboard, bracing, and bridge - from start to finish
3) fretboard - marking, sawing, fretting, filing
4) neck - from initial raw material to the pre-carved blank
5) assembly - gluing neck to body, carving the neck, gluing fingerboard on the neck, gluing the bridge on, initial setup ...
6) finishing - I will go through a list of possible finishes for your uke, followed by a brief explanation of my methods using boiled linseed oil and floor wax.

I'm off to jam with a bandmate, but I have taken a few pitcures, and made some text for part one, which I will review and likely will post in a few days if I can get some use of a hand-held digital camera.

edit: as a postscript, I invite you to PM me about any comments on my style so far - I would like to know your thoughts as to how well I am photographing, and explaining, any of this so that I can make further updates/posts better, and perhaps edit and format this whole project into a .pdf, which I will try to distribute for free.

 

[pie_man_25]

okay, so you've got your cigar box, and you want to get started on this thing. Your box is probably going to look something like this:

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first thing's first, you're going to have to remove the paper from the cigar box. You can remove all the paper, or all the paper on the inside - I've really only removed all the paper, so I'm going to just remove the paper on the inside. It's not too hard, mostly just time-consuming. I'm going to show the removal of the paper from the inside of my lid, which I've decided to remove, and then glue on, to make it more stable. I just cut it off with my swiss army knife through the paper, any knife will do though

step 1) score the paper with a nail, not too deep, you just want to break the surface to make it permeable to water. I'd show the photo, but you really can't see the detail.

step 2) wet the paper with warm or hot water, it dissolves the glue.

step 3) use an average kitchen scrubby thingy - its an abrasive pad used to help scrub off the more stubborn food on dishes, available at any megamart really. Wet it up and go to town, this is going to take a while, your thumbnail also helps with this process.

the finished product should look something like this:

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okay, we're gonna have to wait a few hours to let this all dry, so I'm going to discuss the process of making some basic plans for the body, as well as the lining of the body.

okay, I'm making a 13 1/2" scale soprano ukulele, the neck meeting the cigar box at the twelfth fret. This makes the whole thing easy to measure - the neck (without headstock) should be 6 3/4" + 1/8" (the width of the nut) - which makes about 6 7/8", plus the headstock. The bridge is going to be 13 1/2" from the fretboard side of the nut, which makes it 6 3/4" from from the neck side of the body.

trace the body on to a piece of paper, decide which side the neck is going to attach to, here there is going to be the neck block - a piece of hardwood about 1"thick by 2" wide, placed in the centre of that side. Next, draw a line parallel to this side, 6 1/2" from this side, this is going to be where the inside edge of the saddle of the bridge is going to be. Next, you're going to draw two lines going diagonally from one corner, to the one across from it - the point at which these two lines meet is dead centre to your ukulele, I like to place my 2" sound hole - drilled into the soundboard with a holesaw - in such a way that the edges come into contact with these lines, it gives you a centred hole, as well as being a reasonable distance from each edge of the soundboard. From here you can figure out where the bracing is going to go. The standard ukulele has two braces on the soundboard: one on each side of the soundhole, as well as a bridge patch. The purpose of the bracing is to add strength to the soundboard, so that it doesn't bend or break under the tension of the strings, without adding too much mass, which ruins tone. The braces should be about a half inch deep, by a quarter inch wide, by however long your soundboard is wide, minus a half inch for the quarter inch lining on either side. The last part to be drawn, is the lining, it is a quarter inch by a quarter inch, and lines the inside of EVERY edge of the box. The nails/staples that they hold the box together with are not strong enough toe hold the uke together, and this provides a gluing surface to hold each piece of the box together.

the neck is going to be explained later, but for now we have a working blueprint for the body. The next thing we need to do is line the box. Make some 1/4" lining for your box out of just about any wood, and glue them to the inside edges, on the neck end, however, only glue in the neck block - it's really all that side is going to need, the finished product will look similar to this:

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except without the paper on the inside, and it will be fully lined.

edit: I've made a TERRIBLE mistake in terms of order, before you line your ukelele, if you want to make a solid wood soundboard, you have to remove the non-lid side of the box. To do so, remove the paper that lines the perimiter of this side, and wedge a putty knife, or butter knife, in between the sides and bottom of the box, you will hit the nails, that's ok, just twist the putty knife, until there's enough space to pull it off the rest of the way with your fingers. THEN you may proceed with the lining of the box.

 

[pie_man_25]

okay, it's been a while since I've updated my progress, and it seems like its going to be a while longer. Unfortunately there are a few reasons that I have been unable to make some progress on this build:

1) This semester's exams have just ended last week, so I've been studying a lot.

2) We've been doing some light renovations (putting up a few light fixtures throughout the house), so I've been helping out with that. That as well as the fact that the 2 square feet of workbench space I have right now are being taken up by the tools we've had to take out for this.

3) Christmas season is coming, so a lot of the next couple weeks are going to be taken up by time with family, new year's, and winter camping.

I'm going to try to make one last post before leaving, but progress is going to be slow for the next little while.

 

[pie_man_25]

Okay, I'm going to be able to make this post, as well as one more on friday (Christmas eve) before calling it quits for the next two weeks.

Alright, we're on to the soundboard - one of the important parts of the ukulele - although it's not like there are any "unimportant" parts of the uke. This ukulele is going to have a solid-wood soundboard, which means that instead of the plywood board they have on the cigar box, I'm going to make a very thin piece of solid wood for the soundboard instead. Although you probably already knew what all that meant. The wood I'm going to be using is either spruce or pine 2x4 that used to be keeping our house up. The aim of wood selection for the soundboard is a nice light, springy wood that resonates well - softwoods like spruce, red cedar, yellow cedar, and redwood have been used, the most used stuff on "figure eight" ukuleles is genuine honduran mahogany, african "mahogany", Koa, and even mango, given the size of the ukulele it can be afforded cheaply and they are mostly easy to work and nice to look at. Though I do think that Lighter hardwoods like alder, poplar, and perhaps even basswood would be suitable.

Anyways, what you should avoid in terms of wood is large knots and holes, like this board here:
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this board doesn't have enough space between the knots to make a soundboard, and to incorporate one of them into the soundboard would be a pain in the a$$. What you're going to want should be something more like this:
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this piece has few knots, and the nail holes are limited to the ends, which can be easily removed:
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it's probably hard to read the marker here, but the top writing says "cut here", because I would not like to have the nail holes in my customer's soundboard. The writing on the bottom is simply pointing out these holes that I would like to avoid. So I cut this end off, and measure the length of the box, plus an inch or so so I have some extra "fudge space" to work with:
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After cutting this piece out, I planed out all the sides, save for the butt ends, with the jackplane. This makes sure that all the sides are straight and even, as well as helping with the finish. I then drew a simple design onto one side with a marker, this helps me affirm the orientation of my wood - which helps with the bookmatching later. Nothing complicated, just a simple sawtooth:
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after this I made cut it down into two pieces of about 1/4" each - these will have to be planed down again to about 0.7"- but not before cleaning up the edges with a running board, then joining the three pieces - 1 of redwood in the centre, and the two bookmatched pieces of spruce/pine on either side of the redwood - I kinda like the contrast between the white spruce/pine and the darder redwood, the first soundboard I tried to do was this same thing, but I screwed up REALLY badly so I couldn't use it, so now that I have the experience and know better than to make my last mistakes, I'm going to do it this time.

edit: I forgot to post pictures of the semi-finished product:
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[Musiclogic]

This could prove to be a very cool uke....roll on Pie man(pun intended)

 

[BassCycle]

Subbed. Interested in seeing how this comes out.

 

[pie_man_25]

Allright, so I've got the soundboard finished, as well as bracing, and even gotten started on the neck, with some new photos. I will be posting these photos and updates/instructions when I get home from class later this evening. I'm just a little short on time right now to be posting this stuff now. In other words: BUMP.

 

[pie_man_25]

Allrighty, this is my first REAL post in about a month and a half or so, I'm sorry for the wait.

Okay the soundboard has undergone a lot of change since my last post, so I'm just going to explain how it got that way, and post pics on how it looks. The soundboard was in a rough state when I last posted, something like this:
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it was indeed very rough, and about a quater inch thick, though it was uneven due to the warpage that has occured over the past 50 years of this 2x4's life. So the order of business was to plane it down, then join the two sides, and then glue it all together and plane it down to the final thickness of about 0.0625" thick, I'm not sure what the metric measurement for it is, but I AM trying to learn it. Anyways, I had to give them a preliminary planing just to take the rough surface off, as well as pereparing the edges for joining with my joining jig and a block plane:
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this helps make the completely square and flat surface on the sides being glued to ensure that there are no gaps. I then glued them together using scotch tape "door hinges" as a clamp, it actually works surprisingly:

1) line up the sides being glued against each other, then apply scotch tape width-wise (perpendicular to the joint/seam of the pieces of wood).

2) fold them open, kinda like a closet door.

3) apply glue , and spread it evenly with your finger.

4) straighten it out again, and apply tape to the other side, clean up any excess glue with a wet cloth.

The finished product looked something like this:
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My next step is to thin the soundboard down, which is done in two stages. Stage 1:

1) dust off the bench and put a couple of strips of double-sided tape onto the table, and remove that film to expose the fantastic, space-aged double-sided feature for use.

2) put the soundboard onto the tape, pressing down onto it to make sure that it sticks.

3) set-up the jack plane, adjusting the blade to make sure that the bite will be big enough so as not to make the process too long, but small enough not to bite too much. This can vary on the wood species, I've found that with oak and maple and other harder woods that a really small bite is required and you'll just have to work it all out, but with softer woods you can get away with a bigger bite.

At this stage, unfortunately, I've run into a problem, I was pulling this soundboard off the bench - you have to be VERY carefull with this part - and the piece of redwood in the centre snapped into several pieces. Rather than gluing it all back together, I just took it all out, re-joined the sides, and went on to thinning it out stage 2. I've developed stage 2 because it never planes to a uniform thickness, I think because the sole of my jackplane is not perfectly straight, so this is more to get the soundboard to a uniform thickness than anything else:

1) measure the thickness of all ends of the soundboard, and feel the centre to see if it's as thick as the edges - it's hard at first but eventually you get better at it.

2) repeat the first two steps of stage 1.

3) set up the block plane to have a VERY small bite, this is more of a refining process, rather than taking off lots of material.

4) use the block plane, with a number of passes, to even out those areas that need more thinning.

the finished product should look something like this:
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okay, so it's choked on a couple areas, as well as not bookmatched very well at all, I'm going to have to sand those down later. The bracing is next, I cut out a new brace out of some spruce, carve out one side with a knife to have a curved edge, as opposed to a flat one, them glue the flat side to the soundboard with a couple of clamps. Once the glue is dry (aka the next day) I scalloped the braces with a chisel. I'm still not any good at it, but here's what it looks like:
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After that point, I cut the ends of the brace off at the sides, and glued the soundboard to the body. to do this, I put the soundboard on the bench brace-side up, and then glued up all the edges of the surface on the sides that are being glued to the soundboard. I pressed the sides onto the soundboard until glues squeezed out and I then took all the heavy weights I could find and put them onto a piece of plywood and placed said piece of plywood onto the whole assembly, to weigh the sides down onto the soundboard. I then trimmed the soundboard down with a boxcutter, and a blockplane. The (currently) finished project looks like this:
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there'll be some of the inside, as well as my construction of the neck soon!

 

[Skitch it!]

Craftmanship is a universal aspect to be appreciated imo, I will enjoy following this thread, cool

 

[pie_man_25]

Craftmanship is a universal aspect to be appreciated imo, I will enjoy following this thread, cool

I'm not too good at this, I assure you, my joinery needs a lot of work, but of course how else would I get this skill other than through practice I suppose.

 

[Skitch it!]

I'm not too good at this, I assure you, my joinery needs a lot of work, but of course how else would I get this skill other than through practice I suppose.

This is part of that craftmanship

 

[pie_man_25]

okay, well the neck is becoming more complex than I really wanted it to be - which has become the product of my own conscious decision as well as one tiny little detail that I accidentally overlooked, so instead I'll be posting up my theory for making a simple neck blank instead of posting pics of my current process because it's proving to be unnecessarily complicated. I will illustrate these instructions, but it's probably just gonna be stuff I did with MS paint and not be very fancy at all. In the meantime, I'm gonna go through the wood selection for the neck again:

Wood for the neck is one of the places where the wood matters most - it has to be very stable, light and capable of withstanding the tension of the uke without warping or being too dense. Knots, particularly large ones, should be avoided - you're going to be carving out this neck into a 3-dimensional shape as opposed to a 2-dimensional plane, so it's imperative that it be as uniform as possible. The tension of the uke is minimal so the strength issue is almost non-existent. The wood used most often is mahogany - given that it is light, easy to carve, and strong enough to withstand the tension of the strings. Although there are many other suitable woods - maple (hard or soft), oak (if you can get some quartersawn stock), poplar (this stuff is great if you're on a budget), spanish cedar, and I believe even redwood may be used, although I'm not quite sure about redwood.

Anyway, I'm sorry about being so slow with this- my school work and my band are taking up most of my time, though I've got this week off and I hope to be able to put up another good post by sunday.

 

[pie_man_25]

okay, so I'm finally finished with the neck, and I've got some new pictures to show you my progress. To those who are following this, I'm sorry it took me such a long time to get to working on this thread again, I've been really busy with my band, school, my new girlfriend, and trying to keep up a regular sleeping schedule. On to the neck!

okay, so you're going to want a neck blank that's two feet long, 3 inches wide, and about an inch thick. Cut 3" off the neck, and glue it on to one end of the board. I usually glue it on one inch off of one end of the blank for a reason that will be uncovered in the later in this post. This will make the heel of the neck (make sure that at the distande between the center of the "heel block" and the nut area is 6.5") The other end will need to be cut at a 15 degree angle, and glued on to a scarf joint, make sure that the headstock piece is 6 inches long, and 3 inches wide (that's a good width, though it can be 2.5" and still fit the tuners on well) and one half inch thick.

Next is shaping and carving the neck blank. the neck should be 1.75" at the 12th fret, where it meets the body, and 1.25" at the nut, so draw a centerline as well as two lines on either side for the edge of the neck. Cut just outside of these two lines. I usually draw the centerline, then mark out the width of the neck relative to the centreline at the nut and twelfth fret, and then use a ruler to draw a line between the two marks and cut just outside of that line with my coping saw. Then clamp the neck down so that it is hanging over the bench, using the 2" lamination and that one inch hanging over it as a place to clamp (I told you it'd come in handy!). I then use a spokeshave to slowly and carefully carve the neck until a round shape is achieved - I also usually cut the neck to a tapered depth starting at one inch at the heel, and at the nut one half inch, I find it gives it a more natural feeling shape. Lastly, carve out the heel of the neck with a wood rasp, I usually have trouble with this part, so I normally just try to round the corners out as opposed to achieving a uniform, symmetrically curved heel. Then cut the neck off at the 6.5" mark at the heel (6.5" inches between the nut/beginning of fretboard area and the heel of the neck), make sure that this cut is COMPLETELY SQUARE STRAIGHT AND ACCURATE, the joint between the neck and the body are of utmost importance.

If someone wants an illustration of this process, (I was done with the blank before I started building the uke), I'd be happy to provide one, just ask.

So at this point, the neck is more or less done, the headstock could use a shape, but is otherwise good. So I decided to clue the neck to the body. I'm going to say that a butt-end joint is good enough, but for the sake of craftsmanship, I decided to try to do a mortise and tenon joint, which failed miserably, so I tried to make a putty out of some sawdust and wood glue and just jam the neck in and pray it works. It did, but I still decided to use a couple of screws, just in case. I can guarantee that a butt-end joint with nothing but glue will work just fine, but if you want to do it "just to be safe", I recommend putting in one or two small screws into the joint as well, drilling a hole from the inside (being careful not to drill THROUGH the neck) and putting some glue onto the screws just before screwing them in. some pictures here:

Link Removed this was before the screws, to show you the joint. It looks kinda derpy and lame where the neck and headstock meet, because I was stupid with this blank and managed to screw up a bit. I'm actually really proud of how I've managed to make a full curve at the heel, it took me about an hour with my rasp to finish it.

Link Removed and after the screws were added.

Link Removed this is just a view of the top, again, derpy where neck meets headstock.

Allright, so now I've got the body and neck assembled, and this thing is starting to take shape! I'm going to make the fretboard now, out of two pieces of oak that I've glued together and planed down to about a quarter of an inch:

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I then marked out the frets (using the automatic fret calculator from Stewmac.com) with a pencil, my digital calipers, and a square (so that I have nice even lines to mark the frets that are all parallel to each other):

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I'm likely going to be cutting it tomorrow, and working on the bridge as well tomorrow (also out of some white oak), and probably drilling out soundholes too. A new update (hopefully with the finished product) will come later this week, I guarantee it.


Anyways, I think I would like either a beer or a shower at this point, so I'll stop working for today.

 

[pie_man_25]

allright, so the neck was attached to the body, and the fretboard was marked down and needed to be slotted for the frets. The next order of business was to slot the fretboard. I used my fret saw from stewmac, and used my mitre boxe (just a cheapie from home depot or Rona). The saw did jump around a bit, but I tried to keep it as accurate as possible. It ended up looking like this:
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Then I "stenciled" the neck shape onto the fretboard, by clamping the fretboard to the neck and outlining the neck onto the fretboard. I then cut the board down to the outline, and then proceeded to clamp and glue the fretboard to the neck. I waited overnight, and then proceeded to sand the fretboard down to fit perfectly on top of the neck. It ended up looking like this:

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Oh yeah, I also made a bunch of tiny soundholes in the shape of "B.L.", for the "client's" initals, though I think I just might replace it with a big circular hole instead 'cause it looks goofy.

I've actually managed to get the frets done as well, but since I don't have a picture of that, and I'm currently at the U across town, it'll just have to wait. It was actually easily the best fretwork I've ever done (not saying much, but I'm still proud of it), and I must say that I recommend making it out of a solid hard wood, as opposed to the cigar box ply that I was originally planning on using, it seems obvious now, but I didn't get it beforehand - harder woods will keep hold of the frets while you're working with them. Definitely one of the mistakes I've learned from. Well, you know what they say, tools don't make the carpenter, but lousy tools can effect the work.

 

[pie_man_25]

allright, so I've got the bridge clamped up, and the fretjob finished. To do the fretjob I very lightly hammered the frets in with a mechanic's hammer. Then I clipped the ends of each fret off and used 100-grit sandpaper to sand the edges down to the edge of the fretboard(just thought of the idea, and it actually worked). Then I used my triangular file to file each fret down to a curve at the end and to make sure that it's level with the wood. I then marked the 13" point on the body as well as the centre point and carefully glued the bridge to line up to this point, and then clamped it down. It's still clamped at the moment, and looks like this:
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allrighty, all I need to do now is install the nut and tuners, possible cut out a good soundhole, glue the back onto the body, and then apply the finish.

 

[pie_man_25]

I've managed to re-cut out the soundhole, as well as glue on the back, the saddle on the bridge, and the nut. I've also installed grover tuners - I figured this person was worth the $15, this leaves my overall cost at $30.50 - $20 (shipping and duty included) on the tuners, $2.50 (ordered with the tuners) for fretwire, $5 for strings, and about $3 for the wood for the neck.

Right now I just need to give it a coat of linseed oil, and install the strings and set it up!

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[pie_man_25]

I've got this thing completely finished now!

I've applied three layers of boiled linseed oil to the soundboard and neck, by applying it with a rag, then wiping off the excess an hour later, then waiting about 8 hours between each application. Then I applied some floorwax, by applying the wax (again, with a rag), waiting 20 minutes, then "buffing" it with a clean rag. after leaving it over night, I strung it up. I could not wait to hear what it sounds like

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I will say, it's the best sounding uke I've built so far. I like to review each uke I've built, so that I can record my progress and to give me direction on where I can/need to improve. I give it this review:

setup: good
sound: satisfactory
quality of workmanship: needs improvement
finish/appearance: good

I'm content with the sound - I've heard better, but this is the best sounding uke I've made so far, so I'm satisfied with it. The setup I think is also the best I've done, which I would say is on par with (if not better than) the setup on most ukeleles that cost $30, and the intonation is pretty close to bang on. The workmanship in my own opinion needs improvement - I'm not satisfied with the way I screwed up on the neck blank, as well as the neck joint, and I think I really can (and should) focus on improvement in this area. Finish gets a good, I'm not exactly aiming for a flawless mirror-like finish, I want this to have an element of warmth and character to it, not to look like it's been heavily polished in a factory. In all, I'd still give this uke a "needs improvement", I don't want to say I'm satisfied with this process until I can say I've perfected it.

 

[pie_man_25]

does anyone want me to post a soundclip? I would like to, but I think I should wait for the soundboard to break in a little. My "customer" left for europe yesterday, and will be back in a month, which is good because it gives me the time to play with it, enjoy it, break the soundboard in, and study it and review it so that I know where I can improve next time!

 

[Meatrus]

Looks cool, well done. How many hours would you estimate it took?

Oh, how did the Linseed come out? Cant quite tell from the pictures. When I use it I cant get it to look like a proper finish, just a bit oily looking, but I probably wasnt leaving it long enough.