I'm building a Soprano Ukulele for my Nephew. This was all posted on another forum and I am reposting it here. I started building November 2, 2010.
Here are the materials. The large block is Spanish Cedar and will be the neck and the neck & tail block. The two strips under it are the sides, then the top and bottom. These are AAAAA flamed Hawaiian Koa. The small piece is the headcap, also Koa, a pre-slotted African Ebony fingerboard and binding strips. I have some scrap Ebony I will use for a bridge, and Spruce for internal bracing.
Here I am planing the sides down. The brass bench dog at the end keeps it in place.
This is how I gauge the thickness, I made this years ago when I made violins. I thicknessed them down to around .074".
Bending the sides here. One half is done. The sides soaked in water as the bending iron heated up, and I use a spritzer to add more water when needed. The form of the iron is my own custom design I had CNC'd from a solid block of aluminum at my work years ago. I designed it for violin rib bending but it worked okay for a uke.
Here they both are roughly trimmed. There are a few tiny cracks and a rather large one going half the width of one of the sides. I should be able to glue them up without issue. I stuck a wedge across the middle at this point and will leave it for a day or two to fully dry to the mold shape.
More work done this week. I planed down the top and back halves, they will be one piece, and a book-match of each other.
The top is around .060" and the back closer to .064". The sides should have been thinner, but info about ukulele construction seems to be hard to find on the net.
Here are all the Koa shavings from the sides, top & back. This is a 5 gallon pail.
Making the neck & tailblocks from Spanish Cedar. The end grain is on the sides of the blocks so I am not gluing to it.
I used a blockplane in a vise to rough shape the blocks, then sanded them with a piece of sandpaper held in the mold to get the exact shape. Here they are all trimmed and glued. The instrument begins to take shape.
This is a sanding board I made to level the top and back surfaces. Note the black strip of wood at the bottom, this raises the end giving a slight curve to the surface. I wedge it in more to curve the back surfaces even more.
Here I have notched the side assembly for the braces. This makes it much less likely a brace will pop loose under force if the end is tucked under the lining and side.
This is a clamping fixture I quickly made. Typically a "go-bar deck" is used to glue the back and top to the frame, as well as braces too, but I didn't want to make one as this is a one-off. My thinking was the soft plastic hose would give enough to yield an even clamping pressure.
Here are the roughed braces for the top, also Spruce. The bottom piece is the bridge plate and it sits under the bridge. The brace next to it will also get the slight curve like the back braces, and the top will be left flat.
I glued the two upper braces first, here the bridge plate is being glued.
And after that everything got nicely trimmed.
Once again I cut the slots in the frame for the braces. Prior to this I resanded the top gluing surface of the frame on the sanding board with a slight wedge on one end to give a curve near the tailblock.
And finally the top gets glued into place. Due to the curve both the back and, to a lesser extent, the top have I couldn't just clamp the top on the same way I did the back. I pulled out a set of clamps I made for gluing up violin bodies and they seemed to work quite well.
First I start by making a binding cutting jig for my router table. My original is long gone so I made this up. I start by making a flush cut to trim the excess of the top and back overhang.
After trimming I then sanded with blocks and dowels to get the sides nice and smooth and flat, and sand out a few problem areas.
Then I switched the bearing on the router bit for one that is 1/8" smaller than the diameter of the cutter, giving a 1/16" binding channel depth, and adjusted the jig.
The results. They are oversized in both thickness and height so next will be trimming them. I think a contrasting binding adds alot to the look of an instrument.
Here is the Ebony binding trimmed flush. I once again used the router and jig with the flush trim bearing I started with as the grain orientation of the Ebony allowed me to do so. Lots of sanding still required after however.
Next I started on the neck. A big block of Spanish Cedar with crappy grain orientation. These are advertised as "quartered" which looks like this "||||" in a board but it came rift sawn which looks like "////". The grain also goes on a slight angle along the length of the board, highlighted in my picture by pencil lines.
This is what I had to do to get one usable soprano sized neck, even though these are advertised as enough for two tenors.
After that I spent a bunch of time designing my headstock. It's based on one I designed years ago for a couple ukes I made but I never kept a copy of it so I had to go by memory. I also made some scanned copies.
Here I planed the fingerboard gluing surface and a squared side for cutting, as well as rough cut the headstock face to 15 degrees.
Finally I thinned down the Flamed Koa headstock overlay to 1/16". I also sanded it extremely smooth as tomorrow I hope to laser engrave my logo in it at work.
So here is the laser engraved headplate. It's my name in Hawaiian. I did a few test pieces and filled one with Ebony sawdust and superglue then sanded it but prefer this look. The label will be dedicated to my Nephew.
I then planed the rough cut 15 degree heastock portion of the neck, marked out the centers and relief cut the back area for clamps and glued it on.
Next I began work on the fingerboard. Here I setup my straight edge in my vise to cut the edges square.
Here it is trimmed. It is pre-slotted for a 13.5" scale length. I have slotted my own boards in the past but didn't want to bother this time.
Here I am aligning the neck for fitting. I forget how I did this on past ukes so I hope it works. I placed the body on the neck where it will sit and traced it's profile.
Then I cut it out and cut away most of what will not be present in the finished neck.
This is how I fitted it. 60 grit sandpaper taped to the body and I carefully, with small forward and back movements, sanded the end of the neck to a tight fit with the body while checking for alignment constantly.
Next I cut out the side profile of the neck.
Notice the nice straight quartersawn grain, all that work with the neck blank paid off.
Here I am planing the back of the headstock to it's final thickness of 7/16". There are easier and faster ways of doing this but I enjoy using handtools.
I finished it off with a sanding block and checked on my thickness gauge I earlier used for the top, back and sides.
Next was gluing the fingerboard. I learned this tip of using alignment pins in the fret slots from a luthier I worked for years ago. Takes all the aggravation out of something very important sliding around on the glue. The holes will be touched up later.
And finally clamped.
Next I layed out the headstock profile and drilled the tuning peg holes. I drilled a hole on the waste area to test fit the tuner bushing as shown.
I then marked and drilled for the inlays. The side dots will be solid white plastic and the front dots are abalone.
I then cut out the neck and headstock profiles. The neck profile is cut on a slight angle toward the back. It's based on the width of the toe, the end point of the neck at the base where it attaches to the body. I am making it half the width of the fingerboard at the body which is 1-3/4", so in this case it's 7/8" wide and 7/8" deep. It's shape will be an arc, the same arc I used for the back of the heel and the base of the headstock.
Here is the headstock's profile planed and rasp'd smooth.
Now I am shaping the back of the neck. I start by nocking off the corners, then I take the side profile down to meet up with the fingerboard. I then make a couple facet type cuts and blend it all together.
At this point I realized I haven't finished the toe cap so I stopped to trim down the toe area and glue it on.
That's it for now, I will post an update probably tomorrow with the neck shaping finished, neck glued on and fret work done as well as work on the bridge.
