Oh woe! Oh woe!

After sending hundreds of ukes around the world in my custom designed boxes and umpteen layers of bubble wrap and "FRAGILE" stickers all over it,the postal services have finaly knacked one of my sopranos . The customer is going to try and get it repaired and I have refunded , But what a shame, That was a nice little Koa uke.:wallbash:

Whenever the USPS is scheduled to deliver to me, I'm always concerned that it will be damaged. A couple weeks ago I received the Chuck Moore coffee table book wickedwahine11 (Staci Blevins) put together through Kickstarter "Building and Owning a Moore Bettah Ukulele" and it was smashed. Luckily Staci insured it and got the $50 payment out of them. So far none of the ukes that the USPS delivered have been damaged, but I have two ukes coming from China in the next few weeks delivered by USPS and I am concerned.

I was roundly ridiculed when I made a video 6 years ago on how to pack a ukulele for shipping. If they are going to the US a Hard Shell case is essential and that surrounded by 3 wall corrugated cardboard. I use boxes made for me. They cost £5 each. When I have no case they are lined with 1" polystyrene and the uke is boxed.. so box within a box within a box. Done this way you can successfully claim the insurance value from UPS. Also, it is near impossible to crush such a box. The only time an instrument of mine was damaged was the shipping of a harp guitar - there was a 1" hole in the side.... USPS paid in full

When I visit in the summer Ken I'll bring you some of my soprano boxes. get the 1" poly from a builder's merchant - B&Q used to do insulation packs...

It's a beautiful uke and repairs are underway by a local guitar man. He's done some work for me in the past with great results so I'm hopeful. It will be a couple of weeks. Apparently touching up the finish will be the slowest, if not hardest part. A photo will follow.

I wonder if koa isn't a bit more delicate than mahogany. Although my mahogany Timms is very light I've always had a feeling that it could handle a small amount of banging around. The koa is clearly not keen on compression.

Many thanks to Ken for being such a fine builder and a fine person to work with. I hope Ken doesn't consider me bad luck because when the Style 2s and 3s start to emerge from the shed I'll be standing in line again.

My son spent a year tracking down a rare Smashing Pumpkins vinyl LP on Ebay and despite fragile stickers all over it the postman folded it in half to get it through our letter box! My son nearly folded the postman in half!

Bob

Bob Orr said:

My son spent a year tracking down a rare Smashing Pumpkins vinyl LP on Ebay and despite fragile stickers all over it the postman folded it in half to get it through our letter box! My son nearly folded the postman in half!

Bob

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Wow! The post worry me but that exceeds my worst imaginings.

Back when I was buying CDs from Amazon the local postman would just leave the package sitting on the letterbox for anybody to see. I would've phoned and complained except that I worked with his mother, and in the interest of workplace harmony I kept quiet and hoped for the best.

I have custom cardboard boxes made for me. The larger guitar size types run to £15 each and they are only double corrugated. Packing can get expensive. Most people think such a box is going to cost £1 at the most! I used to hunt around trying to find suitable boxes but quickly discovered that I was spending far, far more time than what it was worth. I won't ship without a hard case and I also put in a couple of thin ply sheets to protect the large areas of the box. Add on the bubble wrap and it easily runs to £30, even without factoring in time. I've had one mishap with the shipping. Fortunately the damage was limited to just a tuning button. There's only so much you can do with the packaging though. If something weighing 25 Kilos happens to land on your box from a fair height the chances are it's going to inflict some damage.