Yes, maybe it will work out more like one or two. Certainly one will finish first, and at a certain point, I will probably take one and run with it for a while until I am confident to bring others up. I do see that I do not want to get too many open projects going, so maybe that will limit me to one or two, we will see. I am making jigs now, and preparing wood, deciding what pieces go together. Where I feel questions, I will progress with one until I learn enough to be confident that some sort of 'batch' movement is beneficial.. In my plinth building, I like to work with time, like after gluing, or a milling process, I like to wait for things like movement in wood, actually this is often a lengthy process sometimes with many steps over time, and I like to wait for glue ( titebond, I am just now beginning to experiment with hideglue, and am not sure where I will choose to use it, if it all) to cure before moving on, allowing for swelling, and then shrinkage. Bending multiple sets of sides at once, doing other processes in batch mode, I feel, will give me a better learning experience. I am still watching this all unfold... I see that I want to build more than a couple ukes, I am looking at all the wood that has been accumulating over the years, and there is some cool stuff that is perfect for this. I have wanted to build a stringed instrument for years. It may be that i only build a couple at first, but, for instasnce, I selected some fingerboard blanks, mostly offcut from 8/4 material I buy for other projects. I know that in cutting them down to near thickness, as in blanks that can be surfaced as necessary, they may likely need to be flattened again in a few months, when it is closer to time to use them. Better to cut multiples down, close to dimension, and then do final surfacing when ready to use. In cutting tops, sides, backs, I am cutting in batches, stickering, thinking... selecting. In preparing neck blanks, some of them are glued up, some are cut from solid. I would rather cut them into blanks, and let them sit, this is what I mean by batch. In cutting bracing, and lining, this is best batch cut. Some jigs I will be happy with, some I may toss quickly. The wood I am selecting is nice, and I do not want to wreck it, I will move with respect towards it. I am leaving the best stuff for later, even though I suspect that some of this is really nice stuff. I purposefully cut a couple of 'lesser' sets for the 'test' processes in the initial building, though not so far off as to not be worthwhile, just stuff I have a lot of. I see there is going to be some learning about what my preferences are. In this first build, I will likely have 2 body shapes. When it comes to fingerboard, bridge, and the active bits, at that point I will not be doing that all at once. Hopefully I do not go past the point of no return with any more than one at a time. I will keep one of these, and likely give a few away. Having a few tops being braced at once, this seems a valuable way to learn in listening to tap tones of different species of tops/ woods/ and brace fine tuning. Feeling how the different woods work into ukes during a similar time period seems like a good way to learn. Also, if this turns out to be something that I do once, and never again, I will likely be happy with one of these ukes, rather than if I just built one and it was not quite right. I am not planning a 'batch' build, like someone who does it for a living, just 'batch', in being efficient with setup time with my vision of the process in mind. I am building some ukes this year and pretty excited about it..
What I am learning right now is expanding my woodworking knowledge. I have been bending exotic woods for my big turntables for about 6 years now, yesterday the bending iron arrived, and i was able to bend wood that I would not have been able to bend with my previous knowledge. This is huge for me... very cool.
I guess I am just excited about finally building a stringed instrument. Also, very thankful for the resource of the people who post here.
