Preparing Uke Kits for the Cairns Ukulele Festival 2011

Here's some footage that Micheal and I shot on my iPhone while I was at his place, where we were preparing the kits for the Build a Uke in a week course we are instructing the week leading up to the Cairns Ukulele Festival 2011.

The video is about 7 1/2 minutes long, but I think that it's well worth seeing the processes and equipment we used. The fellow with the full head of hair is Micheal, while I'm a bit challenged in that area. Music is by a couple of very talented muso's that go by the stage name of Bosko & Honey, and are friends of Micheal and me, that live in Kuranda, a little village about 13 km from Cairns in the Atherton Tablelands.

Hope that you find it enjoyable and informative. Those on the forum that are signed up for the course will get an idea of what it takes to get those kits that they put together in a week to the stage where they will lay their hand on them.

Well done Allen. Thank you for sharing I wish I had a shop of that caliber to work in

Thanks for sharing this! It is especially nice to see what you use for fixtures, i.e., cutting the slots for the Spanish neck, etc.

Thanks guys;


It's a hell of a lot of work to put something like that together and trying to keep most of the relevant parts in there, but also limiting the length of the movie. It all took a full 5 days to get those parts together and we could have used another day easily. So condensing it all into 7 1/2 minutes took a fair bit of editing.

The instrument bodies are New Guinea Rosewood. They call it Narra in the USA. Neck the same. Fret board will be Cooktown Iron Wood as will be the bridge. Tops they get a choice of Engelman Spruce, or Western Red Cedar. We are each doing a sample instrument with each top for our own stock, so students can see and hear each instrument prior to picking the top that they'd like to build with. During the class Micheal and I will build another instrument each with a New Guinea Rosewood top as our demo instruments and it will give us a good example of the different tone that you can expect form varying the tops on identically built instruments made from the same piece of wood. Rarely do you get the opportunity to do something like that and keep the reference instruments.

I like that resaw dog you're using at about 5:30. Exactly what is that?

It's on a pin with a nut on the bottom side so you can set it up fairly snug and do a few cuts before you run out of pressure on the spring arm.

Having prepared 12 kits on my own for the Finland build last year I can concur with Allen - it is a LOT of work and something that irritates me a little when I get criticism of my kits as being 'expensive'... without the scale of an industrial operation and largely producing components by 'hand' it is labor intentsive and time consuming. It is a great help when there are 2 of you doing it. Matti and I last month got 10 ukes together in 8 days...

Allen said:

It's on a pin with a nut on the bottom side so you can set it up fairly snug and do a few cuts before you run out of pressure on the spring arm.

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Thats a good idea!..I'll have to make one for my saw.

Excellent video Allen. Very informative and interesting. Thank you and Micheal very much.

We managed to do 22 necks, about 30 body sets. 50 fret boards but ran out of time to do bridges while I was at Micheals. He did 50 the next week. I still have to make the linings and cut brace wood. Thinkness the nuts and saddles. Which reminds me that I've got to get to this as it's about 6 weeks to go until the course starts and time has a way of running out on yah.

Thank you for sharing these updates with us Allen! I'm really excited about doing this course, and it's great to see a bit of the process that happens before we get started on them too.

Excellent video! I do my scarf joints the same way on the bandsaw. That wood pile made me drool.

You just saw a fraction of the wood in that shed. But he's got pretty good security in the place though. At least one bloody big python is roaming the wood stacks. Saw one of the shed skins, and I knew that I wouldn't want to come face to face with it.

Moore Bettah Ukuleles said:

I like that resaw dog you're using at about 5:30. Exactly what is that?

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The second saw is a Hitachi resaw. Wheels are only 14 3/4" but it runs a 3" stellite tipped blade. Has a 2hp 3 phase motor but handles guitar timbers no problem as long as you keep it sharp. I have a diamond file for touching up the teeth.
The big saw is a 36" Wadkin from England. Made in the 60's it weighs just over a ton and runs real smooth.