build a ukulele ?

cool plans

thanks howlin hobbit , that one looks cool and the site has the plans which you can download and look at ...much fun...have you put one together ?

usually i have no patience for kits because i just cant wait for the finished
product ,
strangley i believe the ukulele has helped me become a much calmer person (even though as a beginner i have fingering frustrations ) when you finally hear music coming out of it you chill out and keep going , its great !
what i want to do is approach it (the kit) from a "lets see how good i can make this " instead of how quick i can do it .

has anyone out there done a kit ?
 
Google for some of the other ukulele boards, such as Uketalk, Ukulele Cosmos, 4th Peg, Ezfolk, and you will find a few people that documented their process very nicely. Be sure to use the search function for these forums as well, a build thread was active not too long ago.
 
I just finished the kit from Stew Mac. It came out great. Now I'm working on a fully from scratch one. I'm have a hell of a time bending the sides....
 
The Stew-Mac kit is on my "I wanna" list but I haven't built one.

John Colter has built a number of them. He can be found hanging out at the Ukulele Cosmos forums. He's not only built the kits, but he has a bunch of techniques to "hot rod" them a bit so they're even better. He wrote little review of it on UKukes.co.uk. In it he mentions the Carrot Creek write up of the process, with the caveat that it was of one of the earlier models without the body taper.

He may have written up some of the "hot rod" techniques on the Cosmos forum (I seem to remember reading a bit about them) but I can't for the life of me remember. Search there.
 
thanks

many thanks everyone ...:worship:
i have no idea what i typed into search the first time ...this time around i discovered ukulele underground to be a treasure trove of info please accept my apologies ukeninja.
and that stew mac kit does look tempting
i'm in ukelear meltdown now
too much info too little time
 
It looks like the neck is just glued to the outside of the body. Is that strong enough to survive the tension of the strings?
 
It looks like the neck is just glued to the outside of the body. Is that strong enough to survive the tension of the strings?

Yes. the joint has plenty of glue and the string tension is pretty low.
 
It looks like the neck is just glued to the outside of the body. Is that strong enough to survive the tension of the strings?

I believe one of the hotrod things that John Colter did was to dowel the neck joint.

But even he said it would probably be alright just gluing.

When I (eventually) get around to building mine I'll probably dowel the neck. I also will get the proper glue for the bridge and not put screws through it into the bridge plate. Why add extra mass to the soundboard?
 
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HH, wood glue is plenty strong for these applications. The screws used to hold the bridge in place could be removed once the glue is dry. It's not uncommon to use screws to hold parts inplace and then remove the screws once the glue is dry. with the bridge, one would need a deeper clamp to hold it into place. screws could replace the clamp.

on a side note, I just got done bending a Cherry wood side. It bent MUCH easier then the Mohogany. We'll see how much spring back it has when I pull it out of the jig.....
 
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