Roy Orbison build

Slickstone

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Hi all, I wonder if anybody out there can help me please?
I'm looking to build a concert or soprano copy of Roy Orbisons Gibson ES-335.
Scaled plans would be great lol
I have no knowledge what so ever in building but would love to give it a go.
I figured that if I get the body shape sorted I can follow plans to do the rest.
Any help or ideas much appreciated.
 
Hi all, I wonder if anybody out there can help me please?
I'm looking to build a concert or soprano copy of Roy Orbisons Gibson ES-335.
Scaled plans would be great lol
I have no knowledge what so ever in building but would love to give it a go.
I figured that if I get the body shape sorted I can follow plans to do the rest.
Any help or ideas much appreciated.

So. You have zero building experience yet you want to copy a pretty difficult guitar shape for your first build!
Buy a uke kit from Stew mac and gain some experience, then consider your next move.
 
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Sage advise from Dennis!!
Not to be mean or cruel but that's a pretty ambitious start. Starting with a kit or something a little easier would be really beneficial. After you get a few successful builds under your belt you can get more aggressive and try different things.
There is so much info out there between the builders here and youtube, books like the Hana Lima 'Ia book available from them directly, that you can make a really good start.
Don't be discouraged but encouraged.
Really, all the best.
th
 
Well thanks for the advice guys, yes it's ambitious but ya gotta aim high lol.
Comments have been taken on board and noted. I'll try an easy one 1st but will continue to look for plans to my project.
Thanks :)
 
Take this image and scale the body size up in a photo viewer to the size of soprano. Get some parchment paper and use masking take to tape it to your monitor. You can see the image through the paper, take a pencil and lightly trace out the shape.

https://www.electricherald.com/gibson-es-335-templates/

The hardest part over making a regular soprano is the cutaways. What you would want to do is make a wooden plug following the shape of the area from the bridge pickup edge next to the neck joint taking in the whole neck/cutaway area. You want to make it a hair shy of the shape as you are going to laminate the side to the shape. Since you are mounting it to a solid structure you can thin it right down to make bending easier. You could drill a lightning hole in each horn of the plug, if made of spruce it should not add too much weight to the instrument.

As far as size of instrument, couldn't talk you into a concert size? It might be easier to get a good sounding instrument rather than the soprano.
 
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I've been contemplating having a custom 23" scale bass uke in the style of an ES, with tailpiece. I'm not a builder, but if you have success, I may hire you.


8 tenor cutaway ukes, 3 acoustic bass ukes, 8 solid body bass ukes, 8 mini electric bass guitars

• Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children's hospital music therapy programs. http://www.theukc.org
• Member The CC Strummers: https://www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/videos
 
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